- Good morning, this meeting can come to order.
I'd like to say on one hand,
it's nice to see Senator Carper
acting as my ranking member
but the circumstances are unfortunate to say the least.
Senator McCaskill's husband is in the ICU,
and so Senator McCaskill is with him in Missouri.
So we certainly want to send them
our thoughts and prayers and, you know for,
for Claire, for Joe, and for their
family members as well.
- I just mentioned to um, to him.
I texted with Claire last night
to see how he's doing.
Apparently he had a massive heart attack,
very serious heart attack, and he had,
I think it was an internal defibrillator
that may have saved his life,
and there's still blockages
to worry about and I think
some additional surgery work
that needs to be done, but to what Chairman said,
let's keep him in our thoughts and prayers.
- Thank you.
I also want to thank our witnesses,
not only for being here, for your testimony,
and for what you're about to answer
in terms of our questions,
but really for the last two and a half months.
I've been to FEMA's response center,
I've talked to the men and women
that are working with you,
I think doing an extraordinary job,
working 12 hour shifts,
seven days in a row, for literally weeks,
months, months on end.
So this has been unprecedented, you know.
Starting back in late August with Harvey
and then Irma and then Maria,
within literally a span of 30 days.
We just have not seen anything like this,
and I think it's pretty heartening, really.
After Katrina, the lessons learned,
a lot of those lessons have been put into place
and used to do rather great effect.
But when you have hurricanes
and disasters of this magnitude,
you can't just snap your fingers and
make it all well again.
This is gonna be a recovery effort
that's gonna go on for years,
but I think the response
I think we'll hear that in testimony today,
has really been quite extraordinary.
Nothing's ever perfect, it can always have
continuous improvement,
but again I think the men and women
that work with you in all of your agencies
really need to be commended
and I think in terms of your management of them,
also, needs to be commended as well.
So again, I thank you, and I think
this committee thanks you as well.
This will be what I consider first
in a series of hearings.
Really, from my standpoint,
started with the high risk hearing
when I asked Inspector General Roth
to take a look
at the problems in FEMA grant lending,
how we spend money in emergency situations,
what kind of controls and Inspector General Roth
responded very quickly.
June second, in a letter to me,
made a number of recommendations which we
have turned into a decent draft legislation
working with Senator McCaskill,
also Senator James, anybody else on this
committee want to start working with us on that.
We've been talking to appropriators
on how to potentially marry that
with some of the emergency funding requests,
the supplemental funding requests
that we're passing here.
We're spending a lot of money,
and it needs to be controlled.
And I think the issue with Whitefish,
I'm sure we'll get into that,
is just exhibit A of how careful we need to be,
in terms of how we spend
the taxpayers' hard earned money.
I'm hoping,
and I've seen certainly with Director Long's
testimony, we do need to review
and lay out FEMA's proper role
within the emergency management response.
It's a subordinate role.
If we can quick put up the chart there,
wherever our chart is, there we go.
Everybody has this as well.
This is just a history, this was put together
I think by the Heritage Foundation,
it only goes up to 2011.
It just shows the history of FEMA declarations
of emergencies, and it's really striking.
Back in the '50s,
there were somewhere between seven and 18 a year.
In 2011, high water mark, 242 Federal
Disaster Declarations or FEMA declarations.
There are a number of reasons for that.
Certainly we continue to build,
we have that moral hazard,
we continue to build and rebuild
in flood zones and hurricane zones and the
property values are increasing dramatically.
But I think also more and more often
states are looking to the federal government
to do what I believe was probably
more suited toward state and local response.
As a result, it puts a great deal of stress
on federal disaster resources,
and certainly FEMA, and I'm sure Director Long,
you have felt some of that pressure
over the last couple days.
So I think it's appropriate for this committee
long term to really take a look at what is
the proper balance between state
and local response and the federal response
in these situations.
From my standpoint, as much as we can rely
on the state in terms of preparation,
standing up those emergency centers
and the response before these disasters occur,
the better off we're all gonna be.
So I wanna make sure we're talking
a little bit about that during the hearing.
I did go down to Puerto Rico.
I was down there on the seventh,
about two and a half weeks afterwards.
I will say that my initial response,
having flown over low flying helicopter
over about a quarter to third of the island,
I was first relieved that the property damage
was not as extensive as I was expecting it to be.
Now there's no doubt about it,
there's devastation,
there's property totally destroyed,
but I'd seen pictures of St. Martin.
And then just the basic stats,
two and a half weeks,
22 of the 23 ports have been opened,
more than 70% of both gas stations
and grocery stores were already opened.
A third of the roads were open,
but as we flew over it,
it looked like in excess of 90% were clear.
But obviously blocked in certain choke points.
Cell phone companies responded pretty
appropriately.
Kind of shared the burden, cordoned off the island,
fixed each other's towers,
so it will be interesting to hear to what percent
the cell phone service is back and operational.
All 72 of the municipalities, back then,
were already accessible by road,
so logistics problem was being eased.
But the biggest problem was,
at that point in time only 12% of the electrical
power had been brought back online
and so I returned convinced,
and I think I continue to be convinced,
that the primary problem,
long term now with Puerto Rico,
and even before the disaster, was the power grid.
It was weak, it was fragile before the hurricane,
and now it's offline it's a very complex problem,
trying to reestablish and maintain
the balance of that electrical grid.
And we're gonna be spending an awful lot
of money and from my standpoint,
that's gotta be controlled.
And what money we spend, hopefully,
can be spent in a manner that we create
a more resilient electrical grid that will power
a vibrant economy in Puerto Rico
for generations to come.
My last point is I've been in contact with the
Chairman of the Financial Oversight
Management Board and I just received
an email or a text from him last night.
And they met and I'm just gonna
quick read you the text on the record.
"The Federal Oversight Board unanimously has
asked for a Chief Transformation Officer
to take over the administration of the
power authority in order to reestablish power
as quickly as possible.
But moreover, we must transform the energy sector
and ensure lower costs and more reliable power.
In order to do that,
we have to depoliticize the authority,
open it up to competition in order to attract
private capital.
Puerto Rico does not want to return
to D.C. with hat in hand in the future.
The person of the board has named is a
retired Air Force Colonel who has organizational
and transformational experience,
including management of energy and
infrastructure projects that was signed by
Jose Carrion, the Chairman of the
Financial Oversight Management Board."
So they recognize the fact that we've got
a real problem with the governance of,
the public ownership of PREPA.
And again, that was exhibit A,
based on that $300 million contract
which apparently now has been
pulled back with Whitefish.
But again, I just want to thank the witnesses,
and I'll turn it over to Senator Carper
for any opening statements you want to make.
- Thanks, thanks so much
for bringing us together, Mr. Chairman.
I know a couple weeks ago Senator McCaskill
had called for a bipartisan investigation
scheduling series of hearings,
I'm delighted to hear that this is not the last
but the first of several.
Want to express, as well, our thanks,
appreciation to those at the table before us.
Those who work with you, for you,
for the extraordinary work they're doing.
I believe that in the last hundred years or so,
we've had a total of 33 Category Five hurricanes
that have struck the United States.
33 in a hundred years and we had literally two
within weeks of each other this year.
Our friends at GIO present to us each year,
as you'll recall a high risk list,
every other year beginning of each Congress,
things that we need to focus on,
ways that if we did, we could save some money.
They always, for years they've now been saying,
one of our high risks is the incidence
of extreme weather and the cost that it's
imposing on the federal budget.
The cost here is just extraordinary,
and I think in terms of root cause,
we need to keep that in mind.
I'm delighted to hear the Chairman mentioned
the electric grid
in Puerto Rico.
I oftentimes quote Albert Einstein
who said famously,
"in adversity lies opportunity".
And as bad as the adversity here is,
there's also opportunity,
especially with respect to the electric grid.
Most the people, as I understand, I've been
to Puerto Rico a number of times as a
Naval flight officer operating out of Roosevelt
Roads, as a governor hosted by Pedro Rossello
when he was governor,
part of the National Governors Association,
just as a family vacation and been around
the island a fair amount,
and my recollections is that most of the power
is generated in the South of the island.
Most of the people live in the North
of the island.
Most of the power is generated from diesel
power generators and utilities and it is dirty,
it is expensive.
the cost for electricity in Puerto Rico I'm told
is roughly twice what we pay here
in the mainland and they have an opportunity.
I talked with Governor Rossello yesterday,
who I remember when he was basically a teenager,
his dad and I were contemporaries together
in the National Governors Association,
but we talked about his vision.
And his vision would be to move power generation
from the South to the North where the people are,
so you don't have to transmit
all that electricity
from one side of the island to the other.
And to use natural gas, bring down the cost.
And right now the diesel fuel comes from,
I think, mostly from South America,
including Venezuela.
We're not sure that that's a good place
to be dependent on.
And the idea of having the ability of large ships
to come in with natural gas to the North,
to have power generation there, and to also.
Governor said to me his goal in time is to step up
increase independence on their generation of
electricity from renewables,
including solar and wind and others.
Maybe including distributed generation of
electricity and things like using fuel-cell
powered generators for electricity,
especially to help like at hospitals
and places like that.
The um. I wanna mention,
go back to my prepared comments here if I could.
I'm proud of our Delaware National Guard.
We've had Delaware National Guard units deployed
to Texas, to Florida, Puerto Rico,
US Virgin Islands and we're grateful to
the men and women.
Not just to the Delaware National Guard but
National Guards all over this part of the country
that are part of this team effort.
Miss John I hope that it the very near future
we can actually have the governors of Texas,
maybe the governors of Florida, Puerto Rico,
the Virgin Islands before us so that we can hear
their prospectives on what worked well,
what didn't, how we could be more helpful.
And maybe even include some like mayors.
Sometimes we don't always wanna hear from people
who are gonna be critical,
but we need to hear folks that are critical
as well as people who think that
a good job has been done.
I always like to say,
'if it isn't perfect, make it better'.
And that's I think if we could hear from
governors, and I'm sure you have this in mind,
governors and some other leaders
that'd be helpful.
I think we're at the beginning of a very long
and difficult rebuilding effort:
the cost, the devastation wrought
by these hurricanes may well exceed
300 billion dollars, 300 billion dollars.
More than double the total economic damage
of both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
We must ensure that the federal government is
meeting the needs of the survivors of these
disasters and at the same time,
ensure that federal funds as the Chairman said
are being used efficiently and effectively.
Every dollar wasted is a dollar that won't be
available to help Americans that are
still in need.
We've already started to hear of allegations of
problematic mismanagement and questionable
contracts and I'm.
Many of us, I'm just gonna talk about this
anyway.
It's been discussed quite a bit but I don't think
it can be discussed too much.
A lot of us were shocked to learn of the
300 million dollar contract to repair
the electric grid that was awarded by the Puerta
Rica, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority,
PREPA to Whitefish energy.
And as you know, country,
a company with two full time employees existing
for only two years ends up getting a 300 million
dollar contract, heaven help us.
Heaven help us, that's just unbelievable.
Cannot overstate the urgent need to quickly
restore power to repair homes, other structures,
as well as to ensure the availability of safe and
clean drinking water for all citizens of the
United States.
I talked about electric generation,
I won't go into that further.
Looking forward to going down.
I think Senator Murkowski is gonna lead a
delegation maybe as early as this weekend.
I hope that's gonna come together and I would
love to be a part of that with her.
They have a fair amount of jurisdiction over
this as does this committee as does Environmental
(unintelligible) where I serve as well.
I, um, think I'll finally just say I understand
the time on which people an apply for individual
assistance has been extended, maybe to March.
Is that? Can someone nod their head on that,
if that' correct.
I think I heard something.
- (unintelligible)
- Okay, yeah. If you'll address that
when you speak that would be great.
And um, yep.
Says right here, FEMA as of last night has
extended the deadline to March.
We're happy to hear of that.
And um, uh, Mister Chairman, in closing
I just want to say uh, a few words about the
obligation that our federal government has to
help rebuild when disasters strike our country,
any party of our country,
when extreme weather like this hits it's scary,
it's dangerous, it's often far more powerful than
we imagine it would be.
For those of us who hasn't had the misfortune of
living in the path of the worst destruction is
hard to imagine.
I've ridden out hurricanes that are just Navy
Destroyer off the coast,
the Atlantic coast.
I've flown into monsoons in our Navy P3 Airplanes
out in Pacific Ocean.
Got run over by Katrina with a bunch of boy
scouts on a sailboat coming down the
coast of Florida during uh,
during that storm.
So had a little bit of taste of this stuff.
It is scary as can be.
But for the people who's reality has become a
nightmare, they just want to know that there's a
path to a better and a safer future.
Clearing that path is a shared responsibility,
though.
The residents of Puerto Rico, their leaders,
their governors, their others must do their part,
but our Federal government has a
moral obligation to help as well.
Like the folks at Home Depot like to say,
'you can do it, we can help'.
And uh, that's, that I think applies here, too.
Keeping with the spirit of the golden rule let's
make sure we that we just do that.
Thanks so much.
- Thanks Senator Carper and I'd like my
full opening statement, my written statement
into the record. - And if I can make a similar
request please, thank you.
- Without objection.
It is the tradition of this committee
to swear in witnesses so if y'all rise and
raise your right hand.
Do you swear the testimony you will give
before this committee will be the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
- [Witnesses] We do.
- Please be seated.
Our first witness is Mr. Brock Long.
Mr. Long is the Administrator of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In his role he leads FEMA's workforce
to fulfill it's mission responding to national
disasters and emergencies facing
the United States including the recent hurricanes
Harvey, Irma and Maria.
And Mr. Long I don't know how long you
were on the job before Harvey hit,
but again I just want to thank you for your,
what I think is just extraordinary service
over the last two and a half months.
- [Brock] Thank you sir.
Before I get started, um,
I'd like to say that my thoughts and prayers are
with ranking member McCaskill and her husband.
Chairman Johnson, Senator Carper, as well as
the distinguished members of this committee
it's a pleasure to be here today.
It truly has been unprecedented and
I'm here to discuss anything you'd like to
regarding the response and recovery efforts that
my staff has helped coordinate across the Federal
partnership when it comes to all the agencies
that have been involved.
Like me, what I've seen inside my agency is that
I work every day with a bunch of,
with with people who are truly dedicated.
That truly come to work every day that want to
save lives and help people, you know,
get on the pathway to recovery as well as
become more resilient.
I've been in office 132 days.
For 70 of those days we've been actively
responding to Harvey, Irma, Maria and the
extraordinary California wildfires as well.
Each one of these events that I just spoke of
could truly be catastrophic events,
stand-alone events,
but they happened in rapid succession
of 25 day period,
which is obviously unprecedented.
Um, you know, Chairman Johnson in regards to this
you know I think it's important to point out
that before Harvey hit FEMA was responding to
over 30 different disasters across the nation
in many states that you folks represent.
And, uh, not only in addition to those major
disaster declarations,
we were also responding to over 50 different fire
management assistance grants,
due to the wildfires that are taking place.
Now, while there's many improvements to be made
to ensure a whole community response and that the
Nationalistic Management System continues to grow
in a positive way,
I do recognize that there are
many challenges ahead,
particularly when it comes to California, Texas,
Florida, as well as the Virgin Islands
and Puerto Rico.
I want to put a couple of things into context
about the magnitude of this recent response.
If you start with Harvey all the way over to
the California wildfires over 25 million
Americans have been impacted.
That's 12 percent of the population in basically
a two month period or over 50 day time period.
The FEMA search and rescue teams alone saved over
9,000 lives.
That's in addition to our DOD partners,
Coast Guard partners, state and local partners,
first responders, neighbors helping neighbors,
like the Cajun Navy coming from Louisiana over to
Houston.
Tens of thousands of lives have been saved.
Over four and a half million Americans have been
registered inside FEMA's individual
assistance program.
That, put that number in context, that's greater
than Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy,
Hurricane Wilma, Hurricane Rita combined.
It's the fastest we've ever put people into our
systems and we put over two and a half billion
dollars in the hands of citizens across the
country to start that road to recovery.
We can't make ya whole but we can actually serve
as a catalyst to help you recover.
Over three point five billion dollars was
expedited in our National Flood Insurance program
immediately to our policyholders.
That number's projected to grow to 16 or 17
billion dollars just for Hurricanes
Harvey and Irma alone.
Since the onset of Hurricane Harvey on August 25,
the nation has worked together with our mass-care
partners: Red Cross, state and local partners,
to shelter over one point one million Americans
in congregate shelters.
The peak population in one night was 200,000.
That's unprecedented, we don't have numbers like
that ever before.
I also have reason to believe that the commodity
mission and the humanitarian mission to
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands,
as well as all of the states,
has been one of the largest humanitarian missions
in the history of FEMA.
Now while there's existing response and recovery
challenges that need to be solved I think it's,
Chairman Johnson in regards to your opening
comments, it's important to point out that
an optimal response and recovery process should
be federally supported, state managed and
locally executed, okay?
Each level of government has a very critical
role to play that we have to continue to define,
what the responsibilities are and what the target
capabilities should be.
In the case of Puerto Rico they were hit by
two major hurricanes in rapid succession,
which created a diminished capacity not only
were the responders now disaster survivor,
but also the ability to respond
was also compromised.
That puts FEMA as the primary responder
and pretty much the first responder which is
never a good situation.
When FEMA's the first and primary responder,
and the only responder for many weeks,
we're never gonna move as fast as anybody
would like, and I recognize that.
Moving forward, we continue to work every day
to restore the power, particularly in Puerto Rico
and Virgin Islands.
Restoring the power solves a multitude of
problems and it's gonna require our partners
at the Army corps working hand-in-glove
with Governor Rossello who I talk to on
a very regular basis.
We have to restore the hospitals and medical
functions to pre-disaster conditions and consider
how to make them more resilient
in the future.
Each one of the disaster housing missions is
gonna be unique from California all the way to
the Virgin Islands and we're working with,
to rectify those issues every day.
Clearing roads, fixing roads, getting rid of
debris is also a major mission.
There's three point five cubic yards of debris
on Puerto Rico alone, okay.
Communications and cell service is
something else.
That I believe we're up to about 85 percent
for example on Puerto Rico.
Retail industries back up to about 90 percent.
The water systems are back up to about
80 percent that PRASA organized and so progress
is being made but we have a long way to go.
In the future,
I haven't had a chance to catch my breath,
doing exhaustive after action review of all the
things that just happened,
what we've learned and where we should go,
but I do have several ideas:
I think as a community we have to streamline
disaster recovery programs that are offered from
across the federal government.
We gotta simplify them, streamline them,
make them easy to understand and help our
state and local partners understand when
to use these things.
I'll be asking for your help to do that.
Implemented and ensure survivable communications-
we have to work with the private industry to
make sure as we become more and more attached
to our cell phones that the systems that are
being implemented are resilient and redundant.
We have to do more pre-disaster mitigation.
Pre-disaster mitigation is the key to becoming
more resilient in reducing disaster impacts.
We have to ensure state and local governments,
like Texas and Florida are the examples,
have their own life sustainment commodity
capabilities in that the federal government
is not shouldering the entire burden.
We have to find low to no cost ways to prepare
our citizens and help our citizens be properly
insured.
Insurance is the first line of defense and those
who are insured will recover quicker than those
that don't have insurance.
We have to ensure that state's and baseline level
capabilities that states have their own baseline
capabilities to handle individual assistance
and public assistance when federal disaster
declarations are not coming to town.
And we also have to do a lot of work to fix
the NFIP program.
These are just some of the things that we have to
work on and a multitude of another,
of several more ideas that I have.
I'm honored to be here and answer your
questions today.
Thank you.
- Thank you Mr. Long.
Our next witness is Robert Salesses.
Mr. Salesses is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Homeland Defense Integration and
Defense Support of Civil Authorities.
In this role he is responsible through
development of policy for defense,
support civil authorities and homeland security,
inter-agency coordination.
Mr. Salesses.
- Thank you Chairman Johnson, Senator Carper,
distinguished members of the committee.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the
Department of Defense's support of the federal
response to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.
The Department of Defense is a fully committed
a critical partner in the National Response
System.
DOD has a long tradition of working with
our federal, state and local partners in
responding to domestic disasters and emergencies.
Led by Administrator Long and FEMA,
DOD plays a key role in the federal government's
support to state and local disasters.
We also support other federal partners
and departments,
such as Health and Human Services,
Department of Transportation,
Department of Energy and their role as emergency
support function leads.
DOD is well prepared and has forces and
capabilities ready to act immediately to save
lives in the aftermath of disasters.
DOD ensures a high level of preparedness
by continually enhancing our
integrative planning,
improving our training,
and conducting joint exercises between our
federal, state and local partners.
In advance of each of these hurricanes,
Secretary of Defense directed DOD to provide
full support to life saving life sustaining
operations in coordination with
our federal partners.
Based on this direction, DOD postured significant
capabilities: Navy ships, strategic airlift,
helicopters, medical teams, and logistics
prior to each of the hurricanes landfall to
assist the citizens of Texas, Florida,
Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
To date, the Department of Defense has responded
to over 311 mission assignments from FEMA and our
other federal partners.
Using the total force in it's response,
thousands of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine,
active, reserve and guard have responded to
these hurricanes.
Under the command of General Robinson,
federal forces conducted search and rescue,
evacuation operations, provided damage
assessments, surveyed and made repairs to open
airports and seaports, cleared critical roadways,
transported life sustaining commodities of food
and water, provided fuel distribution, conducted
assessments of civilian hospitals, and provided
medical support to include evacuating patients
back to the continental United States.
Additionally, US TransComm has flown over 2,800
flights over the last 60 days in support of
these hurricane operations,
With over 1,900 flights in support of
Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
Transporting urgent first responders,
like FEMA's urgent, urban, search and rescue
teams, HHS's disaster medical teams,
relief supplies and equipment, and evacuating
hundreds of residents and patients.
The defense logistics agency has provided
millions of gallons of fuel,
over 850 generators, more than 100 million meals,
and millions of liters of waters and life
sustaining commodities.
The US Army Corps of Engineers conducted flood
mitigation operations in Houston and Puerto Rico,
conducted maritime port surveys and openings
along with the US Coast Guard,
installed temporary roofs to enable people to
stay in their homes,
provided temporary emergency power to over 550
critical facilities.
These included hospitals, fire stations,
police stations and other municipal buildings.
And more significantly,
continues to work to restore Puerto Rico's
electric grid and it's pre-storm status.
A new and unique mission for the corps of
engineers and it's under the role of the
Stafford Act.
Our military services at the installation level
also provided critical transportation,
logistics, medical services to local officials
and their communities under immediate response
authority, and thousands of Army and Air National
Guard personnel working with the respective
governors from the affected states.
And the supporting states conducted
search and rescue, evacuation operations,
commodities distribution,
and other critical support operations.
The men and women of the defense department,
military and civilian,
were ready and acted with a great sense of
urgency in responding to Harvey, Irma and Maria.
Chairman Johnson, Senator Carper,
distinguished members of the committee,
thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
I look forward to your questions.
- Thank you senator, er, Secretary Salessas.
Our next witness if Major General Donald Jackson.
General Jackson is the Deputy Commanding General
for civil and emergency operations for the
US Army Corps of Engineers.
General Jackson oversees the work of the
Army Corps in responding to major disasters,
such as the major hurricanes that recently
hit the United States.
General Jackson.
- Chairman Johnson, Senator Carper,
distinguished members of the committee,
my name is Major General Ed Jackson,
Deputy Commanding General for civil and emergency
operations, US Army Corps of Engineers.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
The Corps conducts emergency response activities
under two basic authorities:
The Stafford Act and Public Law 8499.
Under the Stafford Act we support FEMA
under the national response framework as the lead
federal agency for emergency sport function three,
public works and engineering.
ESF3 provides temporary emergency power,
temporary roofing, debris management,
infrastructure assessment,
critical public facility restoration and
temporary housing.
Under Public Law 8499 we prepare for disasters,
through planning, coordination and training
with local, state and federal partners.
We assist state and local entities to implement
advanced measures that prevent or reduce storm
event damages, and we repair damage to authorize
federal projects and work with states and
municipalities to rehabilitate and restore
eligible non-federal flood infrastructure to
pre-storm condition.
When disasters occur corps teams and other
resources are mobilized from across the command
to assist local offices with their response
to the event.
As part of this mission the Corps has more than 50
specially trained teams supported by
emergency contracts that perform a wide range of
public works and engineering related support
functions that I just described.
The Corps uses pre-awarded contracts that can be
quickly activated for missions such as debris
removal, temporary roofing
and generator installation.
This year the Corps supported FEMA- led
federal response in recovery operations in
support of multiple events, including hurricanes
Harvey, Irma and Maria.
FEMA directed 37 mission assignments to the Corps
to assist in hurricane Harvey response
and recovery.
Currently the Corps has 183 employees
still deployed.
The Corps assisted in temporary emergency power
and continues to support the state of Texas
with the development and implementation of a
temporary housing project management plan.
Debris teams led by Corps subject matter experts
continue providing state and local municipalities
with debris technical assistance to define
requirements and monitor debris removal and
disposal operations in 15 counties.
FEMA directed 81 mission assignments to
the Corps to assist in hurricanes Irma and Maria
response and recovery.
Currently the Corps has over 1,500 personnel
deployed.
As of this morning, the Corps has completed about
1,000 assessments and 550 temporary generator
installations across the Caribbean.
This includes about 250 assessments and 150
generator installations in the US Virgin Islands,
and 750 assessments and 400 generator
installations in Puerto Rico.
Under FEMA authority we were also assisting
Puerto Rico with operation and maintenance of
critical and non-federal generators across
the island.
The Corps has completed over 13,000 temporary
roofing installations in Florida
and is on track to
complete the mission by the third of November.
We also have completed over 6,000 temporary
roofing installations across the Caribbean,
including over 2,000 in the US Virgin Islands
and 4,000 in Puerto Rico.
Roofing requirements in both the US Virgin
Islands and Puerto Rico have been extensive,
requiring additional material and construction
support which initially slowed progress.
We have adjusted added capacity and are now
seeing daily improvements in both locations.
Corps debris subject matter experts provided
technical assistance in counties across Florida
and Georgia in response to Hurricane Irma,
and continue to provide oversight to five regions
within the Florida Department of Emergency
Management.
The Corps is working to remove an estimated
one million cubic yards of debris from the
US Virgin Islands and six million cubic yards
of debris in Puerto Rico.
The Corps worked closely with the US Coast Guard,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and local authorities to open
harbors and navigation channels across all
affected areas, critical to restoring commerce
and allowing the flow of commodities and
essential equipment to reach affected
communities.
The Corps worked closely with officials in
Texas and Florida to manage local flood control
reservoirs during periods of unprecedented
rainfall.
In Puerto Rico Corps dam and levy teams inspected
17 priority dams and worked closely with the
Puerto Rico electric power authority to stabilize
a spillway failure at Guajataca dam.
Additionally, the Corps teams cleared existing
outflow conduits and placed emergency pumps to
further reduce water levels in the dam yet
restore flow to a critical treatment plant
that supports the needs of over 30,000 people.
On September 30th the Corps was given a FEMA
mission assignment under Stafford Act
Authority to assist the Puerto Rico electric
power authority in conducting emergency repairs
to the power grid itself.
The Corps is partnering with PREPA in this effort
and has established a general officer senior executive
led task force,
as well as three area offices on the island
to oversee work and provide technical assistance.
The Department of Energy has embedded experts
in our team and continues to assist
in our efforts.
Within two weeks of receiving the mission
assignment the Corps awarded contracts for
large-scale temporary power generation to
stabilize the grid in San Juan and for additional
line repair assets that will assist ongoing
efforts by PREPA to complete the mission as
quickly as possible.
The Corps remains fully committed and capable of
executing it's other civil works activities
across the nation despite our heavy involvement
in these ongoing response
and recovery operations.
We also remain ready and poised to assist any
future events as they may occur.
This concludes my testimony and I look forward
to answering any questions you might have.
Thank you.
- Thank you General Jackson.
Our final witness is Doctor Robert Kadlec.
Dr. Kadlec is the Assistant Secretary for
Preparedness and Response to the Department
of Health and Human Services.
Dr. Kadlec coordinates the department's medical
assistance after a major disaster,
including sending teams and medical profesionals
to affected areas in working with
local hospitals. Dr. Kadlec.
- Thank you very much Chairman Johnson,
Senator Carper and members of the committee.
It is a privilege to appear before you to
discuss our nation's medical and public
health response as Director Long identified
an unprecedented series of category four and
five hurricanes that hit the US mainland
and it's territories this season.
HHS as well as our inter-agency partners:
FEMA, DHS, VA and DOD have pushed many
organizational and historical boundaries to
save lives and support communities and people
impacted by these storms.
I fully recognize the regions in Puerto Rico
and the Virgin Islands where people are still
facing dire conditions.
I saw the devastation first hand and can ensure
you that HHS continues our response at
110 percent effort and will continue to work
as hard as we can until the conditions improve
and we can bring people back to recovery.
Since this is my first time testifying before
this committee I'll just begin with a brief
description of this position called ASPR.
Sir, in response to your comments, Mr. Chairman,
about Katrina, the ASPR was created almost
11 years ago in response to Hurricane Katrina
by the Pandemic and All Hazard Preparedness Act.
It's objective was simple to create
unity of command by consolidating all of
HHS public health and
medical preparedness and response functions
under one person.
I had the privilege of being the Staff Director of
the Senate subcommittee that drafted
this legislation.
ASPR's mission is to save lives and protect
America from health security threats.
On behalf of HHS, ASPR leads public health and
medical response to disasters and emergencies
in accordance with national response framework
and emergency support function number eight,
which includes all our Federal partners
which are here seated at this dius.
Today the threats facing our country are
increasingly diverse and more lethal.
My main objective is to improve national
readiness and response capabilities for
the 21st century threats.
I'm doing that through four key priority efforts:
strong leadership,
creating a national disaster healthcare system
as director Long identified
that is more resilient and
capable to the challenges that we face
in the future,
sustain a robust and reliable health security
capabilities that again reside at the state and local
level, and again are the backbone of any response
to any future disaster circumstance,
and then lastly advance an
innovative medial counter-measure enterprise.
During hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate,
their severity and near simultaneity created
unique challenges, especially in Puerto Rico
where no place, no person, no life was untouched.
During my trip there I was overwhelmed by the
resilience of our fellow citizens who are making
due in an extraordinarily difficult situations
that have continued to improve over time
because of the extraordinary efforts of the
people and the people in the agencies
are represented here today.
Our response for strategy for health emergencies
have been three fold.
First save lives, principally through the
deployment of our disaster medical assistant teams.
You should be proud to know that I met with your
fellow citizens from your states during my trips
down to Florida, Texas, and to Puerto Rico
were folks from Oklahoma, from Wisconsin,
from Delaware and from New Hampshire were aiding
their fellow citizens first hand.
Second, is to stabilize the healthcare system,
ensuring with FEMA such a very important
activities such as uninterrupted fuel supplies,
portable water supplies, could be delivered
not only to hospitals but to dialysis clinics to
ensure that these vital systems stayed in place.
And lastly, is to restore healthcare services that
need to be recovered to pre-disaster levels.
In Puerto Rico, frankly we're still responding.
In other areas recovery is underway.
In order to save lives, as I mentioned,
ASPR activated the National Disaster Medical
System and deployed more than 2,900 medical
personnel from 21 states and hundreds of other
federal employees, including US public health
service commission Corps personnel.
For each of these storms we deployed teams even
before the hurricanes made landfall,
so they were ready to respond immediately
once the storm passed.
In total we've cared for more than
22,000 patients in the affected states
and territories, 12,400 in Puerto Rico alone
and sent 950 tons of medical equipment and
supplies to these affected areas.
I'm happy to answer any questions you may have,
and thank you again for the opportunity
to appear before you today.
- Thank you Dr. Kadlec.
I'd like to start with Administrator Long.
Mr. Long you talked about (stutters)
you're in a real kinda danger zone
when FEMA is the,
in charge of the first responding.
When you're no longer subordinate
but you're leading the whole effort.
Can you just describe really how it's all
supposed to work and why that's a problem.
- Sure, so (clears throat).
If you look at the Stafford Act, the Stafford Act
is designed to support state and local efforts.
And the way disaster declarations work is that
when a local government's capacity has been
exceeded they call upon county-to-county mutual
aide first, or other mutual aide agreements to
see if they can mitigate the disaster
and the response.
If that's not an option,
or if that's not working
or the capacity has further been expanded,
then they'll call upon the state.
The governor will issue a state of emergency and
then the state will try to rectify as much as it
can the disaster at hand.
And then once that's been exhausted or the state
recognizes that it's beyond their capacity,
they call upon the federal government and we
begin to mobilize.
In many cases, you've seen the National Incident
Management System in the whole community work
and the successful model was in Texas,
it was in Florida,
and it's now in California.
While everything never runs as perfect,
for the most part it's operating as it should.
What we have to do in regards to Puerto Rico,
Virgin Islands and other island territories is
to ensure that they have management
infrastructure in place at both
the state and the local level,
and that we can also make sure that we have
survivable communications.
Any time we lose communications and completely
black out like we did in Puerto Rico,
it's hard to obtain situational awareness and
fully understand what the true response and
recovery needs are.
- Now, you've only been on the job for 132 days,
but I guess who's keeping track?
Apparently you are.
Um, but you've been involved in disaster
response for many years.
Has there been a shift,
I mean have we created moral hazard,
is there more growing reliance on the federal
government being that first responder and being
primarily responsible as opposed to
being subordinate?
- That's a great question.
I believe that would be in pockets, you know.
Some of the states they're very capable states
and then there's some states where I believe,
for example maybe we need to take a look at which
states actually have rainy day funds and actually
have mechanisms to be able to implement their own
individual and public assistance programs
when federal disaster assistance is not coming.
I also believe that many states,
or several states,
have their own ability to run life-saving
commodity capabilities.
They have the ability to handle the first 72 to
120 hours where other states have not addressed
those issues, or island territories.
And so I think we do have to go back and
you know, reestablish with our state and local
partners what is the baseline effort that should
be there and clearly put forward those
capabilities to make sure that we are prepared
to back fill.
One of the things I want to do is I want to
develop state integration teams.
I want to move beyond my regional offices that
I have and put full time staff in with the state
agencies and island territories to make sure
that we're truly doing real integrative planning
on a daily basis.
That FEMA is part of the conversation every day
so that we fully understand how to support all
governors when called upon directly.
- So that might be a pretty good action item here
is when you have time,
go back and really do a state by state,
territory by territory assessment in terms of
their emergency management system.
Whether it's finding the way it's prepared.
We'll note that.
Finally, as I left Puerto Rico,
to me it was just all about power, power
and power.
You've got a disaster,
you've got a crisis already but it will grow
if we don't establish power.
So I'd like to talk to,
ask the Administrator and also the general:
where are we at?
What are the prospects at reestablishing power?
What do we have to do?
- Sir right now I'm exercising under the
Stafford Act Emergency Authorities which is why
we mentioned signing the Army Corps of Engineers.
It was the right thing to do initially because
of the diminished capacity on the island.
They're mobilizing under emergency authorities
to rebuild the grid to US code standards.
The discussion that needs to be taken after that
is how do we build a power grid
that is resilient?
That's going to require authorities far greater
than the Stafford Act to forge me at FEMA.
Typically what we have to do is restore to a
pre-disaster condition but obviously that is not
optimal and not the way I would ever recommend
this country to go.
We do no want to be back in this situation again
after having this disaster and an opportunity
to change is so I'll
turn it over to General Johnson.
- Mr. Chairman, first of all,
I think the grid today is slightly over
33 percent restored based upon the basic load
that it had before the storm.
So there's incremental progress
that's being made.
So the line repair and the restoration activities
that have been done up to this point have been
done by PREPA,
and the Corps of Engineers has done a few things
in terms of getting personnel on the ground.
We installed a 50 megawatt generator at the
Palacio plant just within the last week that
helped to stabilize the grid in the greater
San Juan area and it added about 40 megawatts
to the system today and yesterday which has been
very helpful in upping the power.
We're approaching this in a number of
different ways.
First of all the normal authorities that the Corps
of engineers have under the Stafford Act or ESF3,
temporary emergency power
which are generator installations.
So what we've done typically is we will come into
an affected area, we will install the generators
and then we will take them out as the power grid
comes up and the power grid restoration activity
is usually handled by the local public utility
and sometimes augmented by other capabilities
outside the state.
In this particular case, PREPA chose not to
activate the type of normal arrangements that are
used by the Public Utilities Association,
and so FEMA turned to the Corps of Engineers to
help PREPA with the grid,
the restoration of the grid based upon
the emergencies that it created.
So what we've done up to this point in order
to do that is to continue our ESF3 contemporary
generator installation mission.
We're almost at 400 temporary generator
installations at this point today.
And those generator sizes range from
40 kilowatt all the way up to
one point five megawatt and those get installed
at critical facilities that are prioritized
by FEMA and by the Commonwealth.
And that's typically hospitals, water,
waste water treatment facilities,
communications platforms, schools
and other places.
And we will continue to do that as the,
as the grid continues to come together.
We've also worked very closely with PREPA.
And again just to remind everyone we got this
mission assignment on the 30th of September
to do the grid restoration in Puerto Rico
so we've been doing emergency temporary power
since Irma hit on the sixth of September.
So that mission started then,
and we've gradually increased our capability
to do more and will continue to do so
as long as we need to.
We awarded contract to award the 50 megawatt
generator to help stabilize the load in San Juan
and get more people power more quickly.
Since the 30th of September we've also worked
very closely with PREPA to get an understanding
of what material they needed to do this grid
repair mission.
If you can, and that's been a very arduous effort
because PREPA didn't have a real good handle or
understanding of what they had in their lay-down
yard so we had to go physically from place to
place to count how many poles they had,
how many spools of wire, transformers
and the like.
Which we've done that,
we've placed things on order,
and we've worked very hard through multiple
venues to get the material moving toward
Puerto Rico and that's happening as we speak
today.
We also went through the process of
awarding contracts.
We are unable to enter in the mutual assistance
agreements like the public utility could.
So a mutual assistance agreement that's
entered into by public utility is very similar
to what we award for our debris,
our temporary emergency power contracts.
They're on the shelf, ready to award.
They can be awarded right away.
For the contracts that we've awarded to prime
vendors at floor and also power secure,
we've had to go through a competition process
in accordance with the Federal Acquisition
Regulation to award contracts,
and we've done that.
We've got today 150 contractors on the ground
aside from the 450 Corps of Engineer employees
that are dedicated to the power mission on the
ground today.
By the end of the weekend those numbers will
rise up about another 500,
and by the middle of November we should have
about 1,000 people on the ground.
So we're moving very fast,
to mobilize the line crews
that we need to continue the effort and support
of PREPA.
There are milestones that we've been given by
the administration initially,
were 30 percent by the end of October which
we're there now.
I'm thankful in part to a lot of the hard work
that PREPA's doing and our next goal is
50 percent of pre-storm load by the end of
November and that's the goal that we're shooting
for right now.
- Thank you General Jackson.
By the way, let's go seven minute rounds.
I know there's a request for two rounds
which we can do if people stick around.
All that said, be mindful of time.
Senator Carper.
- Thank you, thank you very much for
your testimony and all you had to offer.
My wife, Mr. Long, is a graduate of
Appalachian State University.
Her dad taught there, math and physics,
for 40 years.
As I recall you went to undergraduate and
graduate school at Appalachian State University.
She asked me to tell you the Mountaineers are
proud of you and I recall meeting your wife and
I think your children at your confirmation
hearing, and to your family and to the families
of everyone who each of you represent.
Whether you happen to be in FEMA or part of
Army Corps or the Health folks,
I just want to really convey our thanks to them
for the support they've provided for their loved
ones to enable to help people in dire straits.
I wanna stay with the issue of energy.
I'm gonna stick with energy.
Recovering governor thought a lot about
how to provide nurturing environment for job
creation, job preservation,
and energy is a big part of that.
Affordable energy, reliable, dependable energy
a huge part of that.
And they don't have affordable energy in Puerto
Rico, they didn't have it before,
and obviously they don't have reliable or
dependable energy today.
And I said earlier that in adversity
lies opportunity.
And my conversation with the governor yesterday
of Puerto Rico where talked about this situation
they have now where the power's generated in the
South of the island,
most of the people live in the North.
They use mostly diesel to power,
they provide power for the electric grid.
The electric grid's badly damaged and
they still have this reliance on oil.
A lot of which comes from South America.
A great, uh, when I look around the world
one of the smart energy programs involves
natural gas where it's cheap and to supplement
that with renewables.
And when the renewables,
when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't
shine, bring up the natural gas
and provide the electricity in a cost-effective,
cleaner way than we would get from a diesel or
other fossil fuels.
Let me just ask,
and I said earlier the governor said to me
yesterday, eventually wants to move to increase
their dependency to renewable forms of energy to
as much as 30 percent, that's his goal.
(stutters)
And let me say, I embrace his goal.
I embrace his goal.
How do we make this happen and
how can we help make this happen?
- I'll take a shot at that first.
Again, my authorities are limited to
the Stafford Act.
And one of the issues that we're coming into is,
and one of the issues that the Army Corps
is facing is that we recognize that the age of
the infrastructure on Puerto Rico,
I believe the power plants was close to over
40 years, average age.
Worldwide the average age of power plants is
about 18 years.
So there's a big discrepancy there and in many
cases I think what we're running into in the
complexities is some deferred maintenance issues
and different things and so,
if you put all of that aside,
what I have the authority to do under
the Emergency Central Services is basically
to get the power back up and running to prevent
further loss of life and public health events
from occurring.
In regards to building innovative, more energy
efficient, you know.
- [Sen. Carper] And I might add more resilient.
More resilient.
- Resilient, you know definitely more resilient.
I think we all agree that that's what,
that's probably what's needed,
but the authority for me to spend tax-paying
dollars to do that I'm not so sure that I have.
And that's something that I would ask
this committee to take a look at.
- General.
- Yeah, thank you Senator.
Just a couple of things.
Everything that you said was right about the
preponderance of the power generation being.
- I note to say I rarely say everything right.
(laughing)
A special day.
- Most of the power generation is on the Southern
part of the island and most of the population
densities are on the North so those,
those North South transmission lines are critical.
About half the power plants that are on
Puerto Rico are fossil fuel,
the other half are a combination of wind
and solar.
The Department of Energy has taken a hard look
at that, you know, just for,
what they have on the island right now produces,
or is supposed to produce about 5,200 megawatts
of power.
They really only use about half that.
So there's a lot of room for, uh, for uh,
some, addressing maybe less power plants,
more efficient that produce the right amount of
power with the right amount of,
the right type of fuel to service the requirement
that exists on the island today.
And the Department of Energy has been thinking
about that and they've been looking at that,
and they've been working very closely I think
with PREPA to help understand what some of
their challenges are.
To make recommendations to the administration and
to Congress on things like what type of,
how much load do they really need?
And how much redundancy do they need
in the system?
And how do they build additional capabilities to
balance that load across all the demands in
the system?
How do they modernize the system to include the
hardening of the system to improve resilience?
These are things that the Department of
Energy had ideas on and that they've shared with
me that I know that they are working up as part
of a, I think it's a FEMA report that we have
some recommendations on maybe the long term,
what a long term solution might be for power
and other things.
So DOE is really looking at that hard,
they've got some real smart guys that are
there on the ground with us,
going through the work that we're doing
to help guide us and make sure we're doing the
right things.
But ultimately they're also looking at
what's the right way ahead for the future of
Puerto Rico so they can make those informed
recommendations to the leadership.
- Yeah you mentioned DOE has some really
smart guys on the ground, they're,
or we'd like, my staff and I, would like to be
able to reach out to them and to talk with them.
And for the record, we're gonna ask you to
provide those ASAP, the contact information
for those folks. - Yes sir, I will.
- That would be great. Thank you.
I, um, and usually it takes uh,
weeks if not months for a full assessment of
damages to be made, an estimate of the total cost
to rebuild.
The reason I ask really for,
I guess for everybody.
How far along are you in the process for Texas,
for Florida, Puerto Rico
and the US Virgin Islands?
When do you expect those complete assessments
of needs to be ready?
We're expecting a third supplemental
appropriations bill but will the administration
be making additional emergency supplemental
requests to assist those communities as
further assessments are completed?
- Well first of all I wanna thank,
I wanna thank the senate and the house for
responding very quickly to every request for
emergency supplementals.
I know that my guys have been working
around the clock to make sure that you guys
stay informed of when we believe that we're
bumping up and running out of disaster relief
funds so I truly do appreciate it.
We've asked for three supplementals,
if I remember correctly, this year alone.
In regards to where the Virgin Islands all
the way to California,
each one of these states or island territories
is in different,
in different stages of the recovery.
But each one of these is going to be a tremendous
long, long recovery,
it's gonna be a long haul for each one.
For example Texas and Florida are obviously
still debate, you know,
focused on recovery housing and making sure that
we provide people with the proper place to stay
as the rebuilding begins as well as
debris removal.
California is in the same boat as well but,
um, there's still some sensitivities in the
state of California as to,
when it comes to hazardous materials associated
with the debris, but also with um, with rainfall.
When you've burned off the vegetation making sure
that we mitigate against watershed issues that
come into play as well.
So everybody's in different stages but
the long term recovery is going to be long.
I don't think we have a good handle on the
total cost of this but you can rest assured that
my guys will be in touch,
you know with your staff members to,
to make sure that we don't fumble the ball
when it comes to disaster recovery.
And we will do our best to also take care of
tax paying dollars
every day. - Thank you.
Thank you.
If I can ask the other witnesses to briefly
respond to the same question, please.
Thank you.
- I don't, look, go ahead.
- Senator we're continuing, as far as,
I'll only comment on the power grid
for Puerto Rico.
So we're still assessing the damages.
We got initial reports from PREPA
when we first were given the mission assignment
and we found that the damages weren't necessarily
as great as they originally reported.
But what we have to do is put people on lines
and make sure that, you know, just because the
line's not laying on the ground doesn't mean
it's operable.
So we're in the process of doing that now
and we'll probably be doing that as we do the
repairs for the next several weeks and we will
be able to put together I think
a much better assessment
on what the overall cost to repair the grid to
the standard that we're seeking under the
Stafford Act in very short order.
- Alright, I'm gonna ask questions
for the record.
I'm gonna re-ask the same question and ask you
and your staff to respond to that question,
alright.
Thanks, thanks very much.
- Again really appreciate number of members here.
I bumped the question up to seven minutes and I
want members and witnesses to stay within
that seven minutes as close as possible
just out of respect of everybody.
Senator Tester.
- Will do. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
First of all I'll just tell you I appreciate
this document, I appreciate it a lot.
I think that this is an instructive piece
of information.
And it's instructive because what it tells me
is that we're gonna continue down this road
until we start looking at root causes.
And I know we never ever want to accept the fact,
'cause it is a bit uncomfortable with what we do
with a changing climate,
B when we have towns evacuated in Montana in the
middle of October due to wildfire,
we got some major things Mother Nature's
telling us and if we don't address it,
we're really not doing our physical fiduciary
responsibility.
First of all I want to start out by saying
Brock Long, I think you're doing a great job.
Um, you came in under difficult circumstances
and getting pounded and pounded and pounded,
and I think you've really put your shoulder
to the wheel and worked as hard as you could
in a very difficult situation,
so I wanna express my appreciation.
A couple things in your testimony you talked
about three point five cubic yards,
or was that million cubic yards of debris
on Puerto Rico?
- About five million but it may be off, you know.
- Three point five million.
- It's six million and that may be
an older number, so.
The numbers are changing.
- Okay.
Um you also talked about pre-disaster mitigation
in your opening remarks and I think the savings
is for every one dollar,
and pre-disaster mitigation it saves four bucks
on disaster on the backside.
Um, I don't think we're spending enough on
mitigation, uh and I think your testimony
implied that.
Do you have any ideas on what we need to do
to address this issue?
- Absolutely.
You know the problem with the way the system
is established is is you have to get hit
to have an extraordinary amount of post-disaster
hurricane mitigation program grant funding.
I believe that's not the right way
of doing business.
I believe specifically section 404 in the
Robert T. Stafford Act dictates how money is
formulated or provided for mitigation purposes.
The 404 money, it would be amazing if we could
work with the senate and this committee to move
that to the front side to offer up on average
I believe we put out seven or eight hundred
million dollars in post-disaster mitigation funding.
Why are we not doing that on the front side
and get it out of recovery,
reduce the complexities of recovery
and put it up front.
And I don't know what the right mix is,
I don't know what the right amount of money
to make a real dent in it is,
but it's got to be not only money up front but
I do believe that, you know,
the key to resiliency is held at the local level
of government with elected officials.
Smart land use planning, building codes,
different things.
You know making sure that there are redundant
systems that are in place.
And um, you know so it's gonna have to be a whole
community effort on the pre-disaster side,
but if we could move that 404 funding to
the front side of disasters,
and it will not be a easy move,
I think it makes perfect sense and I think we can
all agree that that's what needs to be done.
- Okay well that's good.
If you have any language that you could forward
to this committee and the sub-committee on
Homeland Security unaprops I would certainly
appreciate that.
- [General Jackson] Absolutely.
- Because, uh, I think that um,
it's a no brainer.
Major General Jackson you said you were assessing
the grid in Puerto Rico.
Can you give me,
are you about done with that assessment?
I guess what I'm, I'll ask the question,
just tell me if you can answer it or not.
Is it shot? Is it 90 percent shot? 95 percent?
100 percent? Or what, where's it at?
I mean I'm talking about devas- done.
Start over. Rebuild.
- The answer to that is no, it's not shot.
The initial reports that we got said there
was 100 percent damage to distribution.
That's 31,000 miles worth of line.
- [Senator Tester] Yeah.
- That's not the case.
The initial reports that I received said
it had all of the, that 80 percent
of the transmission lines were shot.
- [Senator Tester] Yeah.
- That's 2,400 miles - [Senator Tester] Yeah.
- of high voltage.
- What do you think it is now?
I mean what do you think it is?
A half?
- Sir, I think, I mean literally, I mean,
part of it is just,
let me start by just saying we've got to,
as I flew over Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago.
- [Senator Testser] Yeah.
- A lot of, there's a lot of lines that are up
visibly and a lot of lines that are down visibly.
The problem is until you get folks on the ground
to see if those lines and the components that
make up the line system are operable,
you don't really know if the line's energized.
So that's what we're doing right now.
We're not doing a full assessment, um,
and waiting to do repairs.
We already sort of know where we need to go
and what we need to focus on. - Okay.
What I'm trying to get here is this-
we've been told that the transmission-
the distribution system in Puerto Rico
was horrible before the storms hit.
Are we doing repairs to a horrible
distribution system,
or are we fixing a horrible distribution system.
- Sir, under the Stafford Act we are fixing
the system to get power out to the people
as fast as we can.
- So that the next hurricane hits it's not
gonna knock down everything that wasn't knocked
down in this hurricane and we're back
in the same boat.
- Well if you have a category four-
five hurricane,
unless the lines are buried under the ground
it's gonna knock wires down.
- Even if it's new construction?
- Even if it's new construction.
- Alright. Is there any effort to talk about
maybe, uh, developing generation, uh,
so that the distribution isn't as needed.
I'm talking not only renewable but even,
even conventional generation.
- Sir my understanding is,
as Senator Carper alluded,
the governor has an interest in locating
the power generation more closely to the
population densities that they support.
- [Senator Tester] Okay.
Therefore it would obviate the needs.
- [Senator Tester] Good.
For these long transmission lines across
the island and DOE has taken a look at that.
- [Senator Tester] Yep.
- To help put together some ideas
for the leadership.
- Are you taking, and I don't know if you do this
or if Mr. Salessas does this, but are you looking
at other options, every option,
not only carbon based but also solar and wind
and geothermal?
- Senator, my understanding is DOE is looking at
what the most efficient modern appropriate system
would be for Puerto Rico, - [Senator Tester] Okay.
- to make those type of recommendations.
- Can you guys, do you guys know anything about
PREPA?
Nobody? What?
- Senator I know some things about PREPA but.
- Here's what I want to know about.
It's a nine member board,
that I should be tickled pink that they gave
a contract to a company in Montana,
but as you look at the situation,
two people, been in business two years.
Never done disaster work before.
What kind of people are on this board?
No big contract.
I mean, I gotta tell you something,
if it was any of you guys, (laughing),
if it was you Brock I wouldn't have started out
saying you're doing a great job,
I'll tell you that. Okay?
- Right.
- So I don't understand what's going on here and
I don't understand where the accountability is.
We have a Federal Financial Oversight board,
maybe they're not doing their job
but somebody's not doing their job.
Would you agree?
I see some head nods and.
- [Audience Member] (unintelligible)
(laughing)
- [Senator Tester] Thank you very much.
- There's a governance issue,
there's no doubt about it.
Senator Peters.
- Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you to each of
you for the work you're doing in these disasters.
Unfortunately, given what's happening with
the climate we may be seeing a lot more of
these disasters, bigger stronger and increased
frequency so it's important that we take lessons
learned from what we've seen here and understand
that we'll probably gonna have to be
applying them again and again going forward.
Mr. Long my time is short today, um,
but I wanted to just alert you that I sent
a letter to you yesterday in my capacity as a
ranking member on the Federal Management Oversight
sub-committee of this committee.
And in that letter I've asked a series of
detailed questions about FEMA's response to
Hurricane Maria and the humanitarian crisis
in Puerto Rico.
I'm not going to go into all of those details,
but the letter is going to you.
I'd hope I have your commitment to get a
quick response because I'm sure our sub-committee
will have further hearings on this matter and
it'll be helpful to frame that discussion and
Mr. Chairman if I can just have that letter
entered into the record, I'd appreciate that.
- Objection.
- Absolutely, I'm aware and uh we will respond
very quickly.
- I appreciate that Mr. Long, thank you.
And as many of my colleagues have mentioned
the concern about particularly in Puerto Rico
is to make sure that we have sustainability
built into any kind of response.
And I know the Stafford Act prevents that from
happening in the fact that it talks about
limiting rebuilding to the way it was in place
when the disaster occurred.
You eluded to that as well in your comments.
Do you think it's time for us to take a look
at the Stafford Act?
Would you recommend us taking a good look
at whether or not that makes sense given the
situation we're in now and what will likely be
future situations given the climate change?
- Yeah and, I work with my staff every day
and there are definite changes to the Stafford
Act that we could consider,
but I would also like to take the time to
methodically, you know, go through those
and submit those if there are recommendations.
Not only from my staff at FEMA but the Emergency
Management Community as a whole.
I'm always for reviewing and bettering processes.
There are opportunities for mitigation as
a result of going through this,
but rebuilding a grid to the level that we're all
discussing here is not within my authority.
And I'm concerned about the deferred maintenance
issues already when it comes to restoring and
conducting permanent work as it is.
- Well I appreciate working with you on that
and as we've talked about before personally
some of those disasters that may not be on
the Stafford Act,
which is a disaster we had in Michigan,
in Flint for example.
I think there are lot of lessons learned from
that disaster as well that means we need to take
a hard look at the Stafford Act and try to
make improvements to make sure the American
people get the help that they need when disaster
strikes their community.
And that leads to my next question,
which relates to the long term nature
of these disasters.
Especially from my experience in Flint,
is that aide is normally available when the
TV cameras are running.
Usually there's quite a bit of aide that will
flow once the public media attention is there.
The challenge is when the cameras stop covering
the event and these folks have to deal with
these disasters for many years in the future.
So my question is how long do you expect FEMA
to be working in the areas affected by
these hurricanes, and do you have the capacity to
handle that workload, which is probably going to
be over the next decade or more?
- Uh, at this point, no doubt about it,
when it comes to recovery staff, we're stressed.
Um, you know we're having to
rob Peter to pay Paul as you could say
from other disasters.
I think right now we have roughly 20,
26 open disasters that we're working nationwide
that don't get media coverage,
so in some cases what we're tying to do is
to to more virtual models and hopefully states
are calling upon state-to-state mutual aide
to be able to start managing a lot of their
disasters and doing things more virtually.
But in regards to the most recent,
these four events that we're talking about from
the California wildfires to the three major
events is gonna take many years to go through.
In cases, when it goes back to your question
on the Stafford Act, we do have section 428 of
the Stafford Act that allows us to do,
move in a more expedited manner and possibly
in a more resilient manner,
but we have to make some decisions as to whether
or not the program is working.
It does reduce the number, the sheer number of
project worksheets that we have to generate.
It allows us to do work more efficiently and
I would like to continue going down that path,
but also take a comprehensive look at how,
how do we get locals and state government to
also make sure that they're funding for staff
positions adequately as well.
When it comes to future grants,
I would rather have grants to hire and train
proper staffing than to buy equipment.
And there may be people that disagree with me
in the industry but you can't replace human
beings and that's what we need when it comes to
the large amount of disasters that we're facing.
- And with these large disasters,
I know it's still early to get a,
a sense of what the cost will be which will
be very large, and you've,
I think all of you have referred to
the fact that's an ongoing process right now.
But do you have any indication in terms of
the hurricanes?
How do you think the costs will stack up?
Which will be the most expensive,
how would you rank them?
- Well it's interesting, um you know when you
look at Harvey and Irma,
I think there's two and a half million people in
Florida alone that have been entered into
individual assistance.
Okay. Two and a half million.
And Harvey we're still under a million, okay.
But then when you look at the impacts to housing,
the amount of money it would cost to fix
flood-based housing issues is going to be
tremendously more expensive than I believe
what we may see in Florida.
California's a whole other, um,
as long as I've been doing this I've never seen
a more disturbing disaster in my life.
And I think they lost 6,800 homes in that.
So each one's tremendously different
and the costs will vary based on what
the services are that are needed.
As far as overall costs,
I've heard numbers inside from my finance guys
saying that we're probably spending about
200 million dollars a day right now just
responding to the four disasters
that we're facing.
- Yeah. And how would you rank them?
In terms of hurricanes,
what's gonna be the most expensive for us?
And the second most?
I've heard estimates that Texas will be
number one, is that accurate?
- Probably Texas, uh, probably Texas.
Well, I don't know, I take that back because
we're not done with Puerto Rico.
We're still trying to uncover,
we're still trying to uncover that but,
but um, I would believe that um,
right now Texas is probably the most expensive
one, but here again that's just a pure guess and
we still have numbers coming in.
- And obviously with long term funding we have to
have local government, state government engaged.
But they need to make plans for long term
investments to recover and to make sure they're
sustainable but it's difficult for them to do
that without knowing the amount of money
that's available, isn't it?
- Yeah, absolutely, um, I mean.
Here again, the money comes mostly,
the largest majority of the funding
that states interact with FEMA is definitely
on the recovery end.
And that goes back to the pre-disaster mitigation
point- how do you plan to implement mitigation
strategies when you have to get hit and you're
not sure how much money you're going to come into
based on the type of disaster.
That's why I think we have to pre-plan,
take it out of recovery and put it up front
so that you can do better visionary planning
over the next couple of years to truly
mitigate your communities.
- Great, thank you.
- Thank you.
- [Senator Johnson] Senator Harris.
- Thank you Mr. Chairman for this hearing
on hurricanes and I appreciate the Administrator
speaking of California.
This hearing is not about wildfires but I would
like to urge that we do everything we can to,
as you appreciate, recognize,
we lost 42 lives in California and the estimate
is currently that we lost 8,900 homes
and structures.
On that point from FEMA, there is still a need,
you're doing a great job.
The Army Corps of Engineers, I was there,
I visited the site, I've met with the families
and you're absolutely right, it's devastating to
those families and that community.
In terms of FEMA there is still a need,
and I'll just put this on your radar for individual
assistance to help cover temporary housing.
You mentioned that it's a big issue throughout
the country and certainly in California.
Affordable housing.
And I know that FEMA does not have the number
of trailers and they're not on the production
line in a way that we can get them to California
as soon as they're needed,
so there's still a need for temporary housing,
help and basic essentials like clothing
and baby formula.
And from HUD if you can just pass this on CDBG
funding for permanent housing is a big issue.
Crop insurance from USDA and then from the SBA
we need business loans for small businesses
that have been destroyed.
So I thank you for that.
On October 27 through the Environmental Public
Works committee which I am also on,
we sent a letter to FEMA and the EPA and the
Army Corps of Engineers asking for um,
information about a timeline and the work that
has been completed or is yet to be done as it
relates to debris.
So I'd like to get an answer to that and if we
can get that within the next week
I'd appreciate that.
There are about seven specific questions.
But as you're aware and has been mentioned here
there are millions of cubic feet of debris in
Puerto Rico and it is my understanding that
we're looking at debris that is large.
It ranges from rooftops to garage doors to
refrigerators and couches.
Debris that people who live there cannot pick up
and move.
There's also been a compromise to the,
to the landfills in Puerto Rico that existed
before the hurricanes hit and remain a problem.
It is my understanding that FEMA plans to remove
the debris but I'm not clear on what the timeline
is for actually getting that completed.
Can you tell me what that plan is?
- Um, so, each one of the events is
extraordinarily different again and
there's no one-size-fits-all approach
when it comes to debris removal.
For example the California wildfires,
if I may use that as an example,
because of the nature of the hazard you first
have to go through and make sure you remove
all the hazardous materials from
personal property.
Then obviously as you said the number of deaths
is projected to go up over 80 and that's because
we're still searching for remains.
- [Senator Harris] Yeah.
- In a very humane manner trying to make sure
that we go through the debris to find remains
of the burning area.
After all the environmental piece is done
and that we correctly go through to look for
remains then a lot of the debris contracting
is done at the local level
through private contracts.
If those contracts fail or the governor requests
me specifically,
then we can mission assign the Army Corps of
Engineers which I believe you guys have been
mission assigned in California,
similar to also Puerto Rico.
Debris in Florida was done differently.
A large majority of that was done at the local
level by debris contracts and pre-event contracts
that they established,
so each one of these may have different timelines
because of the types of debris,
but like Puerto Rico.
- Yeah what is the timeline for Puerto Rico?
- Senator I don't have an exact timeline for
Puerto Rico.
We have just started scratching the surface on
debris removal.
We've run into some really interesting politics
within the 78 municipalities that make up
Puerto Rico in terms of how they are allowing us
to gain access,
so we're in some significant negotiations.
Many of the municipalities have come back and
said, 'we don't really want you to do it,
we'll take care of it ourself'.
So we're going through that right now.
I will uh, I will respond to the letter that you
sent with a much more
- [Senator Harris] I appreciate that.
- definitive timeline than what I just gave you.
- And then, and if you could also follow up on
this point about what jurisdictions within
Puerto Rico are hesitant to cooperate with your
efforts so that we can make sure that we do our
part to figure out how to get some cooperation.
- Will do that, Senator. Thank you.
- Okay. And Dr. Kadlec my understanding is that
the debris piles that are occurring in
Puerto Rico,
that they are wet from the recent rains,
they are attracting pests that range from
rodents to mosquitoes,
and there is also a concern that pets that
are going there and the rodents that are going
there are leaving great amounts of urine that
is also seeping into the waterways.
Can you talk for a moment about the health risks
associated with this accumulating debris?
- Well ma'am there are several issues that
have to be dealt with in that.
One is the moldy kind of debris that you'd be
anticipating and again fungal growths that would
be causing exacerbations for respiratory disease
like asthma.
Also you'd be very concerned about some of the
immuno-suppressive effects of certain fungal
growths that are out there.
People with immuno-compromised situations.
Probably biggest concern about debris piles is
that uh, you find people climbing on 'em,
rooting around in them,
so there's likely lacerations, injuries and
infections, soft tissue injuries
that come from that.
- And bacterial diseases, is that correct?
- Yes ma'am bacterial diseases
- And that can lead to death. - and that would be that.
And the last one you didn't mention but
I'll mention because it's a matter of topical
interest is leptospirosis which is
endemic to Puerto Rico.
Occurs typically during the rainy season,
August through December.
There have been some cases already been defined
or declared and a couple of deaths
suspected with that.
It's a disease that is remedied
by antibiotic therapy.
About a week after the landfall of the hurricane
we were working with the state epidemiologist,
and again, everything we do is in support of
the Department of Health on Puerto Rico,
but basically making available courses of
antibiotic treatment to basically treat
anticipated levels of leptospirosis and other
bacterial infections.
Typically leptospirosis occurs in about
a couple hundred cases a year.
We'd expect that to probably go higher than
that because of the nature of the events,
so we've provided several thousand courses
of treatment for Puerto Rico.
Beyond those kinds of circumstances you'd be
concerned about tetanus.
We've also made available tetanus vaccines
through CDC and also have made available 24
environmental health officers to work with the
department of Puerto Rico as well as
epidemiologists to track not only these kinds of
environmental hazards,
but also the cases
that would be associated with them.
- Mr. Chairman I recognize mt time is up but
I would like as a follow-up from each who has
information about the, the incidents we're also
hearing of people in Puerto Rico drinking water
from Superfund sites because of their desperation
to get drinking water and obviously there are
obvious health risks, huge health risks,
associated with that.
Thank you.
- Senator Langford.
- Anyways Chairman.
Gentleman thank you for being here and getting
a chance to walk through this.
I have a multitude of questions I want to try to
blitz through in a short period of time.
Mr. Long, let me ask you this.
This comes back to the preparation side of this.
The Biggert Waters flood insurance program
in 2012 required a report every six months on
how we're doing on the debt.
What's happening there, what process do we have
to be able to work out of
the flood insurance debt?
The previous administration just stopped doing
that report at the end of last year,
so we don't have that really for two years
so it made it difficult coming into this year
and trying to deal with obvious flood issues
when we don't have a report
for the last two years.
Do you know when that is planned to restart?
I understand full well in the chaos of all it's
trying to go with what's happening currently,
that's probably going to behind again,
but do you know where that is in the process of
restarting?
- I do not but we will follow up
directly with you.
- That would be helpful.
You also mentioned in your testimony about
trying to interact with private entities in
the private sector on flood insurance.
Do you have any specific ideas on that?
Things that you plan to be able to
bring at the end of this?
- Well the NFIP program is underneath
you know, my authorities.
I'm not an insurance, um,
I'm not an insurance expert when it comes to
fixing the NFIP.
Going into Harvey if I remember correctly,
and this is, you know, give or take uh,
a couple million here,
we were 24 billion dollars in debt, roughly.
And then when anytime you have a massive event,
you know Katrina sent it into debt,
Sandy sends it into debt,
Harvey, Irma are gonna send it into further debt
which you guys have recognized.
We have to fix the business framework and it's
got to require a solution from
the private sector.
I think the private sector should drive a lot
of the market and you know,
if we're gonna continue to reward bad behavior
by building in flood zones,
then there needs to be actuarial risks that are
involved.
And I full understand the affordability issues,
but I also believe that we can't continue to
allow conducting business under the same
framework and continue to go into debt.
I don't want to run a program that goes into debt
so I know what I don't know,
and I know that we need the private sector
support.
I need your support to figure out the best
way forward.
- So let, let's work our way through this which
we understand will be months in the process,
and years in many places in the process.
But we do need some help to be able to sit down
at the table and be able to
figure this out. - [General Jackson] Absolutely.
- We have ideas that we're bringing to it
obviously for the practitioners that are working
through this are gonna have specific ideas.
We've got to deal with outside private sector
insurance.
We don't want to create a situation where
private sector creates insurance policies and
then as soon as they have claims
they walk away from it.
- [Brock] Right.
- That doesn't help those individuals.
It doesn't help us federal government.
There has to be some ways to be able to
establish some backstops that will work long
term and can provide some affordability.
So I'd like to commit that in the days ahead
we're gonna try to get some ideas worked out and
look at a long term plan.
That's not gonna be a year to resolve,
it's gonna be a decade or more to resolve
but we gotta be able to get started on this.
I know with FEMA as well
there's been some interaction,
and I'm not gonna press you on this 'cause we've
talked about it before,
but it is odd still in Florida and in Houston
and in Puerto Rico,
that if United Way facility has devastation,
or a zoo, or a museum has devastation,
they can engage with FEMA for help.
But if a mosque, a synagogue or a church has
devastation they cannot.
All of those are non-profits,
but for those that are considered houses of
worship they can't engage in the same way.
I feel like, in reading the law from the 1990's,
when Congress said that non-profits would be
included that's all non-profits.
And I'll be able to continue that conversation
in the days ahead with you on that.
- [Brock] Sure.
- And I know there's been some pushback
which I think is reasonable to be able to
ask that question on that.
- [Brock] Sure.
- General Jackson, by the way,
your family's doing good?
- [General Jackson] Yes sir. Thank you.
- Good. It's good to see you again.
- [General Jackson] Good to see you sir.
- Alright thanks for the ways you continue
to serve the nation.
You mentioned a comment about half of the power
generation in Puerto Rico is from wind and solar,
and half of that is from fossil fuels.
Did I hear that correctly?
- Yes Senator.
- So, of those that are there, what remain?
What was the most resilient?
What is still working?
What is redeemable of that?
- Very interesting, Senator, that you ask that
because I was very surprised when I flew over the
renewable sites, the solar and the wind,
the actual blades of the wind farms were
snapped off and the solar panels were all smashed
and the actual power plants that held up the best
were the typical standard power plants.
Be it the natural gas, or coal fired,
or heavy diesel or what have you, so just the
structures themselves held up better than the
renewables based on what I saw.
- I'm not into renewables, to say the least,
but I think part of the conversation that
we have to have in helping Puerto Rico get back
on it's feet is to look at resiliency long term.
So I want us to be able to look at all of those
things as we go through the process and I know
that'd be a common conversation around this
horseshoe and to be able to figure out how we
actually get them back in place.
I'm asking a question that I know is unfair,
so I'm gonna go ahead and tell you up front.
We're all concerned about why Puerto Rico did not
choose to do mutual aide for their
power reconstruction.
Texas did, Florida did,
other groups when they've experienced it,
they asked for mutual aide engaged.
What have you been told why they didn't do that?
You can't tell me why,
I'm only asking what have you been told
why they didn't ask for mutual aide?
And Mr. Long the question is coming to you
as well next on that.
So, General Jackson,
what have you been told why they didn't
request mutual aide?
- Senator I've been told that the reason that
they did outreach at some point for mutual aide
but because it's a cost-shared arrangement and
Puerto Rico is in the financial situation that
they're in,
that utility companies were hesitant to engage
because there was no guarantee of
cost-share payment.
Now that changed, I believe, when the cost-share
arrangement was waived and then they re-engaged,
the public power utilities re-engaged.
But by that time, PREPA had already reached out
and had engaged with a sole source contract and
that's how that arrangement was started.
That's what I've been told through multiple
sources but I obviously don't have any authority
to confirm that. - I, I understand,
'cause again, I'm not asking what they did
or why they made this decision,
just what you were told.
Mr. Long,
is that the same thing you were told as well?
- Uh, General Jackson is correct
and I agree with him.
Um, many companies are not willing to engage
until there's a guarantee of 100 percent.
- [Senator Langford] Right.
- And uh, the bottom line is that I spoke with
Governor Rossello yesterday,
there are going to re-engage the e-mac process
for power support.
I think specifically they're having conversations
with the states of Florida and New York.
And the goal is is that my federal coordinating
officer Mike Burn has requested that PREPA
make sure that we are unified with the Army Corps
so that we're not working in separate streams but
that we are working together
in a consolidated effort.
- We will follow up with your staff 'cause I have
another question that's a process issue that
we'll have to just talk through and that is-
At times when FEMA can't get it done with
contracts you're punting to
Army Corps of Engineers to be able to handle
any contracts.
What I'd be interested to know
is the contracting process.
Which one takes longer,
which one's more efficient,
which one has greater cost?
At times there is some overlap in between the
'whose got debris removal': at what level FEMA
can handle it and what level they need to be able
to hand it off.
For us that's gonna be helpful just to be able
to know because those are federal dollars there.
Which one's more efficient,
do we need to buffer one up to be able to
correct another one.
- Can I answer the question?
Um, we do not typically contract to rebuild
power grids.
We mission assign the Army Corps of Engineers
who handles the contracts directly
to get the job done.
The best case scenario is the example of Florida.
Florida Power and Light controls their destiny
when it comes to restoring their own power grid
and inactivating mutual aide,
and then FEMA basically serves in a supportive
federal role to reimburse those actions.
- Yeah, my question won't be specifically on
power, it'll be on all contracting.
- [Brock] Sure.
- Whether it be debris removal.
- [Brock] Okay.
- Or whatever it may be.
When we have to hire individual contractors,
who handles that more efficiently?
How does that actually work?
Which one takes longer?
- [Brock] Understood.
- And such, so.
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
- [Senator Johnson] Senator Heitkamp.
- Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you to my
colleague from New Hampshire for letting
me go first.
I have a few questions about the navy ship
Comfort, um and,
according to the Department of Defense,
the Comfort has one of the largest trauma
facilities in the United States is equipped
as well as any kind of floating hospital
can be equipped.
It is capable of treating 200 patients per day
with 250 beds available,
but yet we hear over and over again that there
are people going without medical treatment.
Despite that capability and the staff of over
800 trained personnel,
the Comfort's treated only 100 patients
um, 17 days after arriving in Puerto Rico
on October third and 30 days after
Hurricane Maria made landfill.
Dr. Kadelac, how many patients have been
treated on the Comfort so far that you're
familiar with and can you elaborate on
- [Dr. Kadelac] Sure ma'am.
- the challenges that we've had
getting patients to the Comfort.
- Sure I think the last count was 121
as a result of that.
But ma'am before you make a judgment on that
let me just explain what was the approach
using the Comfort as related to it's high
acuity capabilities.
Which you're correct in saying there are 200 beds
but more importantly there are 15 intensive
care unit beds on that, on that boat.
And that really was the capability that we needed
because quite frankly if you looked at the events
on the island,
we had a level one trauma center at Centre Medico
which was the East side of the island.
- So how many of the patients that were treated
aboard the Comfort were actually ICU patients?
- High acuity patients?
- Yeah.
- If I recall correctly over 60,
I can get you that number though, ma'am.
- [Senator Heitkamp] Yeah.
- But the point was is we used that as a floating
intensive care unit primarily in the bases
when we're trying to.
- So it's your judgment that that the Comfort
has been fully utilized for the need
in Puerto Rico.
- What it did was cover a critical bet that
we had which was based on the risk that the
hospitals would lose power,
because the majority of them,
in fact all of them,
were on generator for a period of time.
Now we have 70 percent back on the grid,
but for the time being when the hospitals were
on generators and the risk of failure before
we could put back-up back-up generators,
we used the Comfort as a place where we could
take high acuity patients,
transport them by helicopter,
by rotary wing medi-vac helicopter.
- I get all that but I think anybody who looks
at this and maybe it's just the news,
and I will turn to you Administrator Long,
who looks at the news and says,
look there's this huge medical need,
people going without treatment,
people at risk of losing their life.
We have this incredible asset,
this is an island, it's not like, you know,
the United States of America where you might
have something 3,000 miles away.
Why does it seem to be to me
underutilized.
- So I appreciate the question,
I understand the frustrations of the questions.
The goal is always anytime you move medically
fragile people, patients,
out of a hospital,
you take a risk of them surviving that move
to begin with.
So the goal is to stabilize the situation in
the hospitals and there was a tremendous effort
to do that because what we ran into was not only
hospitals operating without power,
but making sure that the generator actually
worked, getting it fuel on a regular basis,
and then maintenance of the generator ongoing.
These generators aren't designed
to run for months.
And so what we did is we initiated the Comfort
and Bob, you could probably talk about
the timeline it takes to actually do that,
it's about an eight day process to even
turn the keys on, fuel the boat,
get everybody staffed to even mobilize
and go to the island, it's a long process.
But the bottom line is,
we basically set up a 9-1-1 system as
I understand to where in two or three cases
a hospital generator would fail,
we would move the most medically fragile patients
via helicopter from the hospital to the Comfort.
I would argue that it was being utilized
very well and again, the goal is,
try to get the hospitals to operate.
We're always gonna be second guessed on
everything but try to get the hospitals
to operate and serve patients where they are.
- Administrator Long, I know Senator Tester
hit on this but one of the concerns that I have
given what now has landed on your plate,
is that all of our talk about mitigation,
all of our talk about preparedness,
will take a backseat to just dealing with
the disasters that you've been handed.
We all know based on experiences with Katrina,
with Sandy, this is not, you know,
we're here for a month and then we leave.
What are you going to do or how,
what recommendations would you make to us
in terms of staffing so that you have the
capability of actually looking at mitigation
and not just dealing with the crisis.
- Sure, and you know I've been concerned about
that because I, you know, my staff and you know,
the coordination through the federal departments,
tens of thousands of people have been deployed.
I mean if you look at the actual number
that's been deployed starting with Harvey,
it's been unprecedented,
and I don't have to say that.
And unfortunately I do feel like we're losing
a lot of the successes that have been implemented
as a result of the post-Katrina Emergency
Management Reform act.
A lot of things went right.
So that we don't lose Puerto Rico I plan
to do an after action report to make sure that we
understand where we are versus where we need to
be, specifically not only to Puerto Rico,
but island territories.
- [Senator Heitkamp] Yeah.
- I wanna go back and hit the reset button.
In regards to staff specifically,
eventually I would like to change the entire
hiring process so the Federal Emergency
Management Agency to adopt a more FBI style
academy approach.
I would also like to expand my staff out of
those regional offices to the states and islands
to make sure that we're a part of that discussion
every day.
- I think, um, you received an incredible amount
of bipartisan support in part because we
understood what role you played in the look back
on Katrina.
We hope that you will be equally critical of the
work that you've done.
- [Brock] Sure.
- As Administrator but that you also will
collaborate with us in terms of what you need.
I think Senator Tester said it best.
You can't look at this and then understand
this continues and think that that um,
we don't have a huge challenge where we need to
look at all hands on deck.
What are the requirements that we want to impose
on states so that they understand what their
role's gonna be so they're not overly dependent
on the federal government but that this work
is seamless and so,
I look forward to
additional conversations with you
and to understanding what you need.
But we can't give you what you need
if you don't ask.
- And we will,
we would be happy to put that ask together.
And if I may,
each citizen is responsible for their own
individual preparedness.
We do not have a true culture of preparedness
in this country and we need to hit the reset
button and look at how we, you know,
partner with the Department of Education
and give people critical skills.
I mean, Gale McGovern with the Red Cross said
that one in four of us is gonna have to perform
CPR to someone else at any given time.
Are we giving people those boy scout type skills,
as well as, you know, tangible things to
understand that they may be the true first
responder for an active shooter event,
or if your neighbor's house has
collapsed upon them.
That many times citizens are the first true
responders and we have to start dedicating our
public awareness and cultural preparedness
campaigns to doing that,
as well as figuring out what the states need.
- I couldn't agree with you more.
Thank you so much for your hard work and all of
you working under very very difficult
circumstances.
We hope that Congress can be an effective partner
for you.
- Senator Heitkamp, real quick before you leave,
you may not have been here but one of the action
items I'm taking away from her is literally that
state-by-state, territory-by-territory assessment
who has prepared themselves,
what is that,
what is the current state so we can determine
something during mitigation.
We'll definitely follow that up with a hearing.
- Yeah Mr. Chairman, you know, um,
Grand Forks flood was a devastating event.
We all pulled our state disaster plan off,
(blowing),
blew the dust off of it and realized that
we needed to take that process more seriously.
So, nothing like a state disaster the caliber of
this to realign all of our thinking.
- So we'll work with you on that.
Senator Hassan.
- Well thank you very much Mr. Chair
and thank you all to the witnesses for being here
today and for the work you do on behalf of
our country. We are very very grateful.
I've got three basic questions and so I'm gonna
try to move them 'em quick so we can get to
all of them.
Um, Administrator Long, I want to again thank you
for being here today and also for briefing
several senators on a call on September 28th on
which you updated us on the US government's
relief efforts in Puerto Rico.
On this call you said that the airports and
seaports were all heavily damaged.
You also added that the road networks
were in many cases impassible and that you lacked
trucks and personnel to be able to effectively
distribute the ample relief supplies you had
waiting on pallets.
So when did FEMA and the Department of Defense
first make the assessment that the damage to the
airports and seaports would encumber the delivery
of relief supplies?
- Um, almost immediately and that was the
logistical complexity of being able to put
forward the humanitarian mission.
All of those ports were damaged but it wasn't
just the ports it was the air traffic control
systems. - [Senator Hassan] Okay.
- That also guide those in. It was, yeah.
- So it was almost immediate so when did you
make the determination that you would need the
full capabilities of the Unites States military
to be able to distribute resources based on that
ascendment- assessment?
And when did you first ask the Department of
Defense for the type of assets that we were
eventually provided for the relief response?
- And if I may, I may defer here
but let me be clear.
We engaged the Department of Defense before
Maria hit and so there were a ton of assets on
the island you know before the storm hit.
But you can only put so many people and equipment
on an island or you expose it to the storm
and it becomes useless after the fact.
So it's a balancing game but if I may?
If I may defer? - Sure. Go ahead.
- My name is Bob Salesses. - Right.
- And I represent the Defense Department
here today.
As you may recall.
- [Senator Hassan] Make sure your
microphone's on, please.
- How do I turn it on?
There it is, sorry.
Hurricane Irma came through first,
as you know it hit St. Thomas and St. John,
did a lot of damage.
We actually had DOD assets in the area,
we had the US.
- So I'm just gonna interrupt for a second,
because on the September 28th call with FEMA
and other agencies,
the DOD representative stated that the
US Northern Command was working on a plan to
mobilize an additional sustainment force to
Puerto Rico.
Now that's eight days after the hurricane hit.
Additionally, according to FEMA's website,
on October first US Northern Command delivered
approximately 310,000 meals,
150,000 liters of water,
generators, tarps, additional sustainment units
and leading components of aviation command and
control.
Given that it was apparent from FEMA and DOD
assessment that both the airports and seaports
of Puerto Rico were heavily damaged and that
this would cause immense distribution challenges,
why did it take until October first to deliver
aviation command and control to the island?
And why on September 28th was the US Northern
Command still working to finalize it's plans
to deliver a sustainment force?
And when did the sustainment force arrive?
- So ma'am, to answer that question again,
there's concurrent activity always
in these events.
As I indicated we had Navy ships in the area:
the US Kearsarge, the Oak Hill,
they had helicopters,
they were doing search and rescue capabilities.
Simultaneously, US Transcomm,
which is responsible for strategic airlift and
providing C-17's and C-5's was flying in
assessment teams for air fields.
As the Administrator pointed out,
a number of those air fields had severe damage,
no navigation aids, no radars,
those kinds of things.
That equipment had to be put in place.
All of this was happening well before the
28th, ma'am.
I don't know where the impression got,
there was. - I'll tell you where.
The impression came from the questions we
asked on a conference call
on September 28th. - [Robert] Ma'am there was
a lot of military capability.
- So what I would ask as a follow up will
of course have these letters to you directly,
is some real specifics here because I think
all of us. - [Robert] Right.
- Were concerned that eight days after the
hurricane hit it seemed like we were still
having to suggest on that call that the
United States military was gonna be necessary
to help get some supplies distributed because of
the impassibility of transportation
infrastructure.
I do,
just 'cause I have a couple of minutes left,
want to move on to one other question to
Administrator Long.
Last week Pro-Publica posted a story that stated
that FEMA was declining to publicly release a
document drafted several years ago that detailed
how FEMA would respond to a major hurricane in
Puerto Rico.
According to Pro-Publica,
FEMA started drafting the plans known as the
Hurricane Annex after the lack of preparation
in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Pro-Publica also found similar plans posted on
DOD's website for Hawaii,
which detailed an 85 step process to restore
electricity on Hawaii in the event
of a hurricane.
So why is FEMA not releasing this document
to the public?
And could you please commit to making it public,
and if not,
will you please articulate what was in the
Hurricane Annex and what steps you followed in
the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
- Sure Senator, um, we gave it to the committee
last night, apparently, I was just briefed.
But I was unaware of the issue.
- [Senator Hassan] Alright.
- I would be happy to follow up with you
directly on that.
- Well thank you very much and in that case,
I will also just,
before yielding back the remainder of my time,
let you all know that, um,
well, actually we have a minute so instead of
giving this to the record,
I did want to touch on the US Virgin Islands
and where we are in terms of power restoration
and tourism because perhaps even more so than
Puerto Rico the US Virgin Islands economy
fundamentally depends on the ability of the
islands to host tourists from all over the world.
The Virgin Islands suffered a direct hit from
not only Hurricane Maria but Hurricane Irma
as well.
These storms knocked out the power across these
islands and the islands cannot expect to begin to
reestablish it's tourism economy without the
restoration of power, to say the least.
Yet after more than a month the US Virgin Islands
report that less than a third of the territories
have power up and running.
So, what steps are FEMA and DOD taking to restore
full power to the US Virgin Islands?
And what is FEMA's current estimate of when
100 percent of the islands will have power?
- Yep, so, excellent point.
You know the Virgin Islands were hit equally as
hard as Puerto Rico,
and the bottom line is they're basically in the
same approach.
But there's two different approaches being taken
to restore the power as I understand it.
So where we proactively pushed forward the Army
Corps of Engineers in Puerto Rico,
the power authority that represents
the Virgin Islands is in control and conducting
their own contracts and leading their power
restoration but if, uh,
the last number I saw was that power should be
restored by, you know,
December time frame as well.
But here again, that's just an estimate.
- Okay.
Well thank you again for your participation.
I appreciate it very much and
Mr. Chair thank you.
- Senator Hassan let me just, uh, brief you
what I know about that report you're referencing.
The Annex is jointly owned by FEMA and the state
of, well, Puerto Rico.
It was not released because Puerto Rico did not
give FEMA permission to share with the media.
We got it as a 'for official use only' document
which we're happy to share with you.
But until Puerto Rico agrees to release it,
it can't be released to the general public.
- Well I would appreciate to see it.
I'm glad we have it and I'll follow up with
you further. Thank you.
- Senator Danes.
- Thank you Chairman Johnson.
Thank you for testifying today and uh,
Administrator Long it's good to see you again.
I gotta tell ya,
folks out in Eastern Montana are very grateful
with the fact that you listened to our pleas
when we had some devastating wildfires that
took out much of Garfield County and um,
I think we've seen sometimes the criteria for
dealing with a rural situation,
rural environment which much of Montana is,
can be a bit different than a disaster that
hits one of our urban centers.
And I want to thank you for your responsiveness,
and importantly for your action.
And the folks out in Eastern Montana appreciate
that a lot.
We had a terrible wildfire season in Montana
this past summer.
In fact, Secretary Perdue listed the top
wildfires in the nation as ranked by dollars
spent to fight them.
You know we spent over two billion dollars
fighting wildfires this season,
it's still not over yet.
But the number one fire in the nation was in
Montana- the Lolo Peak fire.
The number three fire in the nation was in
Montana: the Rice Ridge fire,
just in terms of dollars.
So it's one of those terrible seasons and again,
thank you Mr. Long for what you did in response
to help us there in Montana.
Much of the discussion here today has been on,
on Puerto Rico, and the devastating hurricane,
and the loss of the grid.
Mr. Long, I will tell you I was,
I was a bit surprised when I heard the story of
a small contractor of two people
most have never heard of, including myself,
being awarded a contract that was worth, what,
300 million dollars to rebuild Puerto Rico's
power grid.
In the contact,
the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, PREPA,
claimed it met all the guidelines and regulation
set forth by FEMA,
and that it had been reviewed also by FEMA.
Would you explain FEMA's involvement in the
contract process?
- [Brock] Sure.
- And how you monitor federal dollars before
they're allocated.
- Sure. So let me be clear,
the Whitefish contract was not a FEMA contract.
PREPA entered into this contract
in late September.
We were notified several weeks after the fact.
Our lawyers, there's no lawyer inside FEMA that
would have ever agreed to the language that was
in that contact to begin with,
so let me be very clear about that.
And, uh, we raised the red flag in basically
saying, 'we're not sure this is a
sole-source contract or a competitive rate'.
There were many things wrong,
that was also language in there that would
suggest that the federal government would never
audit Whitefish, which,
there's not a lawyer inside FEMA that would
ever agree to that type of language.
So the bottom line is,
is that, um,
as I understand, not one dollar has gone towards
that contract from FEMA.
And what we're doing is rectifying to make sure
that PREPA has not requested any funding for
that, that reimbursement effort.
We have, we have a lot of work to do when it
comes to grant monitoring
in all levels of government.
It's not just FEMA,
but it's at the state and local governments when
it comes to the grant entities that are there.
We asked them to always follow pre-disaster bid
laws and policies because when you change those
policies after disaster,
it's gonna hang you up in an audit.
We also ask them to follow emergency bid laws
when it comes to the procurement process
according to 2CFR, okay.
And so we have a lot of work to do when it comes
to training and ensuring the grant monitoring
but in that case that was not our contract.
- [Senator Dane] Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Thank you, Long. I'll be interested as you
dig into that one for what the learnings are.
- [Brock] Sure.
- From that situation and how we can improve
that process.
It's always one of the concerns
when we have a disaster.
Of course we want to move quickly,
people are in need, people are dying.
But we also want to make sure we're accountable.
- [Brock] Sure.
- Efficient.
And there's often times opportunity for a
tremendous amount of waste in some kind of,
in a situation we're throwing billions of
dollars at at some of these disasters.
So um, I'll look forward to that follow up
what you learned from that, Mr. Long.
And thank you Mr. Chairman.
- [Sen. Johnson] Senator Peters.
- Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Long, um,
one of my constituents volunteered through the
AFLCIO to provide assistance in Puerto Rico.
He was there from October fourth through the
18th and, uh, he certainly said the citizens
remarked how grateful they were for the
assistance that was being provided by his group
because no one else seemed to be there to help
was at least his experience on the ground.
I know a group of National Nurses United had a
similar experience and also made some of the same
comments to me.
So it seems to be a common perception that
assistance wasn't reaching the people in need
in Puerto Rico,
that there were some distribution problems,
that stuff may have gone to distribution centers
but it wasn't getting out,
actually out to the individuals.
So my question is, why why,
why were we hearing that from volunteers and
do you believe that was an issue.
- I can't speak to the gentleman sir,
to the constituents direct experience but I can
explain the logistical complexities that we face
when it came to the humanitarian issues of
getting meals and water out.
As we were discussing earlier,
all the ports were damaged.
It took us time to not only rebuild the air
traffic control system but open up the ports.
You know we pre-staged quite a bit of food in
our Caribbean area division before the storm.
You can only stage so much on the island.
We also checked with Governor Rosello and
the school systems,
they had a lot of food inside the shelters,
multiple multiple days of food in each one
of the school shelters that were there.
So we tried to put as much food forward
as possible before the storm hit.
When it came to the diminished capacity,
obviously the state and local governments,
they were disaster survivors.
As we began to push in the food to the island
we had to quickly mobilize 11,
excuse me,
ten regional distribution hubs where we would
fly it in, set up and stage all the commodities
and then force the food and water to
each one of these distribution hubs.
We had to establish communication with all
78 mayors because there was no survivable calms
that were there.
We started communicating and sending liaisons to
mayors and making sure that we got the
commodities to them directly.
If they couldn't get it to the final mile,
then we would actually air drop it.
If there were isolation issues and I don't know
how many isolation based air drops we've made
but they're continuing today.
Did we get to everybody?
It's hard to say.
Part of it was the lack of communications and the
ability that we recognized that people weren't
sure where to go,
and in some cases what I saw with my own eyes,
I went to Atuabo in the central portions,
mountainous regions of Puerto Rico where
some of the folks in the isolated communities
are being really resilient and they're not
choosing to come to the areas where food and
water is.
And so, the bottom line is,
I know that this is one of the (stutters),
I feel certain that this is probably one of
the largest humanitarian missions that we've
ever conducted in the United States and there
are tens of millions of meals and water that were
pushed and there is a lot of assets on there.
I've also asked the office of Inspector General
to look into how our commodities were being used
by some of the mayors as well and it's my
understanding that the FBI may be looking at that
as well.
- Well I appreciate your candor and I know that
this was a incredibly difficult task that you
were involved in and continue to be involved in
probably for quite some time,
and I appreciate your efforts on that.
And you've been very candid in this hearing today
and that's refreshing to have that kind of candor
'cause the idea is that we have to learn,
celebrate what we did right and learn from
our mistakes to be ready for the future.
But what would you be, your assessment in
Puerto Rico on a scale of one to ten,
in your expert capacity as to FEMA's
ability to meet the disaster?
- Well I think we have a lot of work to do.
One of the first things I want to do is come back
and have an after action.
I want to figure out the grant funding that went
to FEMA, or, excuse me, went to Puerto Rico.
What did we get in return of that?
I want to make sure that, you know,
are the commodity capabilities that are
on the island are obviously too small.
How do we set up island territories to be more
self sufficient that it doesn't require a massive
DOD mission to be able to fly these things in?
There are whole host of improvements that
need to be made and I recognize that.
I'll be dedicated to making sure that we find out
and do an exhaustive after action and if there
are issues where I need the Senate's support,
I'll be definitely coming back to you to ask
for that support to change the way that we do
business in the future.
Trust me,
I do not want to go through this event again.
- [Sen. Peters] Right.
- As much as anybody else.
- Well, and I asked the one to ten,
that may be tough for you to do,
but perhaps for the average Puerto Rican,
how would they rate the federal government's
response?
You've been on the ground an awful lot,
I appreciate that.
- [Brock] Senator.
- From one to ten,
what do you think they would say?
- With all due respect,
obviously people have different experiences,
I'm not interested in giving myself a grade
or rating each other.
Quite honestly that'd be the only thing that
the media picked up today about
this congressional hearing if that's the case.
Could we have done better?
Did we move as fast as people want?
Obviously in some cases no,
but if you look at.
In the Miami Herald this morning,
the State Department Representative Luis Rivera,
read his assessment and go talk to the mayors,
go talk to the 78 mayors and all of them
and get your assessment from them, please,
because for me to sit back and say
'we did things perfectly',
I know we didn't.
Of course there's things that I wish had gone
better or things that I had known going into
that event, obviously.
But uh, the bottom line is is that
I know at the end of the day,
we pushed as hard as we could.
Our partners pushed as hard as we could.
And we moved as fast as the situation allowed.
And this is one of the most logistically complex
disasters that this nation has faced.
- Well you mentioned talking to local mayors
actually leads into the second question I have
is that as you know,
Isabella County and Midland County Michigan
experienced some catastrophic flooding
this summer,
one of the long list of issues that you had,
that were on your plate this year.
And I head from county administrators,
emergency responders as well as impacted
constituents in general that they very
appreciative of the work that FEMA did to help
them in responding to that flooding.
But that said,
they also thought that FEMA could have done a
much better job of coordinating with local
officials at the beginning of
the response efforts.
And in our experience,
I think as you mentioned,
up front coordination with local authorities
can go a long way to facilitating
that kind of response,
but that's what I heard from
my folks in Michigan,
although again being overly,
being supportive of your efforts,
but thinking that that was a lack
in FEMA's efforts was the local coordination
with local officials.
What do you think we should be doing to better
that type of cooperative effort?
- Personally I would like to expand
our footprint.
You know I would like to change our footprint
and graduate beyond the regional offices.
I would like to develop what we call state
integration teams that are multi-faceted that
are there working with the state every day
and being able to drive out
to your local counties,
and doing things such as approving mitigation
plans with having, having had it to come all the
way back through the region or up to headquarters.
I'd like to change the work force.
I would like to make our reservist cavalry more
in line with what the National Guard approach is
so that you can have a full-time job,
step away from your job to go support FEMA in a
disaster without losing that daytime job.
I would like to change our entire workforce
program to be more like an FBI model.
We're the only public safety agency in
the country that doesn't have a true academy
style model of hiring and graduating people
through our system,
so that we're training everybody to be the next
Federal Coordinating Officer that understands
all aspects of this program.
I'm frustrated by our hiring processes.
I would like to rewrite the book on
how we do that.
And how we maintain and utilize disaster
reservists who are critically important
to our mission.
- Well I think those are all really good thoughts
so I look forward to working with you on those
issues going forward.
Thank you Mr. Long.
- Senator Peters you know,
one of the concerns I have,
just kinda of listening to some of the dialogue
here is
I don't want to see FEMA be the primary
responder here.
I believe the role is to support state and
local governments, to support them.
And the more we expect out of FEMA,
first of all we're gonna spread them thinner,
and now you're gonna have again a one size
fits all model and it's gonna be the federal
government that's gonna have to decide where
all these assets have to be deployed
ahead of time.
States and local governments need to understand
that, they need to understand risk,
they need to be held responsible as well.
And so I think we need to be very careful
as we go down this road and say,
'well hey, how come FEMA didn't do the
job perfectly'.
And listen to people's complaints,
'ah, they didn't coordinate quite as well as
we'd like to'.
Again, it's to help them.
FEMA's role is to help,
to be subordinate to that,
so I think that's incredibly important.
I've only got one other point I want to make
'cause it was pretty interesting in talking
to you, Mr. Long,
we have so much foodstuffs and water to a
certain extent down in Puerto.
You pointed out the fact the private sector is
now asking you,
'we need to reestablish ourselves.'
If our population's gonna rely on FEMA and the
federal government to provide meals,
we're not gonna have the private sector firing
back up and have grocery stores
operating properly.
Can you just kind of talk about what?
- Sure, you're absolutely right.
So, um, the goal is always to get the retail
industry back up and running and the last number
I saw was roughly 90 percent.
Obviously, um, as the retail industry comes up we
should be drawing down on the commodity mission.
In many cases the mayors have asked us to stop
the flow of food but continue the water issues
until the water system is fully back online.
So it's a constant communication battle every day,
or not battle, uh,
it's just constant communication every day with
the mayors to understand what the need is,
where the private sector market is.
But as we go forward I do think that we have to
form tighter bonds with the private sector and
understand the modeling to see this,
not only in Puerto Rico but in California,
or Florida or Texas to say
here's where the market is,
here's where the gas stations are coming
back online so that we can tailor the response
day in and day out.
- I think your name describes what your function
is: Federal Emergency Management Agency.
It's not 'Federal Recovery',
it's not 'Long term Recovery'.
There's gonna be other federal agencies but
hopefully more state and local governments that
are going to really take up the responsibility
of recovering in their local jurisdictions.
With that, Senator Carper.
- Mr. Long what the chairman's saying,
the last hundred years
33 category five hurricanes,
this Fall, two, within a matter of weeks
of one another.
- We've seen uh, very interesting chart that
the chairman has,
very instructive chart that the Chairman has shown
that indicates what's happening in terms of
frequencies, this uh, kinda crazy weather that
we're faced with.
And I would, uh, just uh,
this is a shared responsibility but I would feel
that we had failed in our responsibilities
collectively if we simply rebuild,
help rebuild an electric grid in Puerto Rico
is just as vulnerable,
that is just as energy inefficient,
and that is just as polluting as what
they largely have faced in past decades.
I think we'd really missed a, an opportunity.
Our colleague, Senator Peters, asked you
Mr. Long to evaluate or maybe provide a grade
of some sort to
the work of FEMA so far.
We have a saying in Delaware when a little
fighter, we're a little state,
a little fighter fighting a big fighter and wins
say that the little fighter fights above
his or her weight.
And I think FEMA is punching above it's weight.
And we uh, applaud that.
I think the grade to be assigned is probably
incomplete 'cause there's plenty of work still
to do and think you know that.
Richard Nixon used to say,
I'm the only Democrat I know that
quotes Richard Nixon,
but Nixon used to say
"the only people who don't make mistakes
are people who don't do anything".
Think about that.
Tom Carper always says,
'everything I do I know I can do better'.
And if it isn't perfect, make it better.
So that's our goal, we know perfection
is probably not achievable but we certainly
wan to head in that direction regardless of
if we sit on this side of the dius or your side.
Senator Peters also talked about the interaction
interface between state and local folks and FEMA,
and I would,
this would be one short question for you
Administrator Long that there's been some
feedback that there's been a disconnect between
the governor of Puerto, government of Puerto Rico,
FEMA, the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers,
various contractors on the ground regarding roles
and responsibilities who is doing what activity.
I don't think that's to be totally surprising.
But um, I just uh,
what are you doing to ensure that a cohesive
effort that supports the governor of Puerto Rico
is ultimately in charge of recovery efforts.
Will you just respond to that?
- Sure it's a great question.
So, clear communication is the line,
is what's needed to succeed.
And I speak to Governor Rosello multiple times
a week on a regular basis,
but what we do,
obviously to have wide area management capability
over the magnitude of everything that's happened
is I have to rely very heavily on Federal
Coordinating Officers and for the example of
Puerto Rico,
Mike Burn is my Federal Coordinating Officer.
Technically he's appointed by the President
if you look at the Stafford Act.
And so I have Federal Coordinating Officers over
each one of these disasters that I stay in touch
with but I also reach out very regularly to,
Governor Rosello.
And I gotta tell ya,
every day that man goes to work trying to do
the best that he can for Puerto Rico and uh,
I have deep respect for the governor and
what he's trying to do and work through.
And he's facing the most complex disaster of
many of them.
And so the communication's good,
but I have to set up recovery command on site
and allow the decisions to be made onsite rather
than all the way back up here in D.C.
Incident command decisions have to be made
closest to where the disaster is,
not up here.
- Sometimes when I see adult children of
my friends who gone on to do great things with
their life I say they picked the right parents.
And uh, I would say to Rick,
Rosello governor now,
that he picked the right parents.
My old colleague Pedro was there
with whom I served from '93-2001 as governors.
I um,
I wanna ask one question for each of you
and then I'm done but the question is this.
Just name one thing,
each of you just name one thing,
that folks on our side of the aisle,
those who which serve here
in the Senate and the House,
the one thing that we need to be doing to
enable you and your folks to do a better job.
Just one thing, please.
And we'll just start (stutters)
if I can,
with Dr. Kadlec.
Are you an Air Force Academy graduate?
- Yes sir I am.
- Navy salutes Air Force.
Good, good for you.
- Sir you beat us at football, though.
- Thank you for your service.
- Thank you sir.
I think one of the issues that came up was
about streamlining processes and
effects and activities.
For the healthcare we talk about minutes
and hours really depending life and death
decision and being able to intervene positively.
And I think one of the areas that Congress should
look at is dependencies.
Dependencies affect all the activities here.
What makes it more streamlined,
what makes it more efficient,
what makes it more, most importantly, effective?
And those are the areas that I would identify as.
- [Sen. Johnson] Okay.
- Most important.
- Good, thanks.
General Jackson.
Thank you.
- Senator, thanks for the question.
Since we've spoken mostly about the power grid
restoration I think that's where my comment
would come from.
And that is, I think that if Congress can decide
what in-state looks like.
There's multiple requirements that could
be out there,
multiple things that could be done,
they all cost different amounts of money but
what is in-state look like and what does the
nation want us to do?
Whether it's what the Corps is doing or what,
whoever will do in terms of, you know,
what the power generation will look like.
What the transmission lines and such
will look like.
Being able to craft what in-state looks like with
the resources to match
would be my recommendation.
- Good. Thanks, thanks so much.
- Senator thanks for the question.
I'd say to continue to support the
men and women in uniform,
specifically the Department of Defense
did enormous work in all of these hurricanes.
As you know, the number of Navy ships,
that strategic airlift that was
involved in those,
the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps
active, reserve and guard.
That made a huge different in each one
of these hurricanes.
The Defense Department has evolved greatly
in that responsibility of supporting
civil authorities and that needs to continue
because it makes all the difference to our
citizens.
- Yeah.
Well I know when I'm talking with the folks
from different armed services other than the Navy
I uh, the uh,
sometimes I'll, I'll,
there's a friendly inter service rivalry,
as you know,
not just on the football field.
But I always say to them at the end of those
conversations, 'different uniforms, same team'.
And that's a great team.
Administrator Long.
- Externally for the entire country I think
survivable communications is something that we
have to address with the private sector.
We become more and more vulnerable every day
as we go to digital networks.
And uh, when you don't have redundant systems
or mitigated systems designed to handle
all hazards then it creates panic.
And as we've seen,
we basically just went through a complete
and total communication blackout for an island.
And it creates a lot of panic,
a lot of misunderstanding,
a lot of misinformation.
And that was incredibly frustrating,
so I think we have a lot of work to do
for survivable comms.
Internally,
fix the NFIP,
do more pre-disaster mitigation,
and let's come back to the drawing board on
the disaster on the DRF,
the Disaster Relief Fund.
- Thanks to all of you and the teams you lead.
Thanks so much.
- [Brock] Thank you.
- Thank you.
So my final comment,
I appreciate that my colleagues liked this chart.
There's a number of factors that are built into
the dramatic increase in the FEMA declarations.
One of them is just so we declare more disasters
a FEMA disaster.
And my concern is that,
I won't say the work abdication,
but certainly local and state authorities
are happy to have the federal government
spend their money and be responsible for
greater share for greater share of these things
that are occurring within their state.
So I mean that's part of the factor here.
But again, I want to thank all of you.
I think your efforts have been extraordinary.
I would give you pretty high grade, personally.
Again, I,
this is unprecedented what has happened here.
You get 51 inches in any place,
there's no way to plan for that.
That's gonna create a lot of destruction.
You get category five hurricanes going over
an entire island,
even when it's in the Caribbean that, you know,
is used to hurricanes,
that's gonna cause disaster you just don't snap
your fingers and alleviate all
pain and suffering.
So again, I think the men and women who
have worked with you have done
an extraordinary job.
I thank all of them and I thank all of you.
And with that,
this hearing record will remain open for 15 days
until November 15th, 5:00 pm for the
submissions of statements and questions
for the record.
This hearing's adjourned.
(gavel pounding)