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Transcript of Michael Brown's Testimony Before Congress

9/27/05 NY Times Transcript of Michael Brown's Testimony Before Congress

September 27, 2005
Former FEMA Director Testifies Before Congress
The following is the transcript of the House hearings today on the federal, state and local response to Hurricane Katrina, as provided by CQ Transcriptions.

The New York Times
September 27, 2005
Former FEMA Director Testifies Before Congress
The following is the transcript of the House hearings today on the federal, state and local response to Hurricane Katrina, as provided by CQ Transcriptions.

SPEAKERS:

U.S. REPRESENTATIVE THOMAS M. DAVIS III (R-VA),
CHAIRMAN
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR. (R-WI)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE HAROLD ROGERS (R-KY)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R-CT)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE HENRY BONILLA (R-TX)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE STEPHEN BUYER (R-IN)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE SUE MYRICK (R-NC)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE KAY GRANGER (R-TX)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE CHARLES W. PICKERING (R-MS)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM SHUSTER (R-PA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY)

WITNESSES:
MICHAEL BROWN, FORMER FEMA DIRECTOR

DAVIS: The select committee will come to order.

Good morning and welcome to this morning's hearing. Today the select committee will examine the Federal Emergency Management Association's preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina.

With the help of former FEMA Director Michael Brown, we will attempt to construct for the record a timeline of what FEMA did and didn't do before, during and after the catastrophic storm.

Our focus will be on what happened when, and why. We will ask Mr. Brown whether the timeline events we've constructed matches his memory of how things transpired, and we'll ask him which local, state and federal government officials he spoke with, and what they spoke about.

Like it or not, fair or not, FEMA in general and Mr. Brown in particular have become the symbol of what went wrong with the government's response to Katrina.

Today we'll hear his side of the story and ask the questions all Americans want and expect us to ask. What went wrong? What would you have done differently?

We have the benefit this morning of compare and contrast. While Rita was a very different storm from Katrina, a size large compared to a size triple X, a storm that struck a far less densely populated area, it's clear governments at all level did things differently the second time around.

Despite differences in scale and scope, and strength and speed, and despite the fact that all was not perfect with the reaction to Rita, the latest hurricane showed we already have learned a great deal from Katrina.

If only we'd learned a little earlier.

Supplies were stockpiled on the ground prior to Rita's arrival. The federal government declared Rita an incident of national significance two days before landfall, triggering almost thorough response, and named a federal officer in charge.

These steps occurred two days after Katrina.

Ten thousand national guardsmen were called to Texas in advance of Rita. Louisiana summoned 5 thousand before Katrina. Search and rescue operations were far better coordinated, leading the top military officials to tell President Bush that we need a national plan to manage this phase given the, quote, train wreck that occurred in New Orleans, where at one point 5 helicopters arrived to rescue the same individual.

Even if a little rough around the edges, the massive prestorm evacuation of Houston and surrounding locales showed improved foresight from state and local officials, and how lives can be saved when people pay attention to a coordinated message from their government.

While questions remain about inadequate fuel supplies along evacuation routes and delays in converting highways into one-way outgoing routes, the relative urgency in getting people out of harm's way was night and day.

There's just no easy way to move millions of people. I think we will hear from Michael Brown today that none of this is easy. And with Katrina, he faced a big, big storm, the largest in recorded Gulf history.

It's no doubt true and problematic that many Americans and perhaps even some state and local officials falsely view FEMA as some sort of national fire and rescue team. An important task for this committee moving forward will be getting an accurate description for the record of what FEMA is, what it can and cannot do, based on what it is actually charged with doing.

DAVIS: FEMA is not a first responder agency with the resources to assume principal responsibility for overwhelmed state and local governments during a disaster. This is not the movies. There's no Tommy Lee Jones character who comes in and takes charge of everything. And that's probably a good thing. I continue to believe the worst lesson to be learned from Katrina is that all answers reside in Washington.

But before getting to what FEMA cannot do, let's understand what they simply did not do. Just because they are not first responders doesn't mean they should be a second thought. It's not like we are talking about a division of motor vehicles. We are talking about the federal agency charged with coordinating response to massive disasters.

It's no big surprise that FEMA has ranked last or near last for several years in surveys rating employee morale at large federal agencies.

Today, we seek to find out what happened and didn't happen on the ground. Then we can work backward, beginning, no doubt, today, to discover what may have caused or enabled failures in preparation and response.

Maybe we will end up discovering that it's some mixture of the following: inadequacies or naivete in the Stafford Act; organization or budgetary shortcomings; state and local governments that didn't know how to ask for help or simply didn't; a bureaucratic mind-set that now emphasizes terrorism to the exclusion of natural disaster planning. We will explore these possibilities and more.

Today we will ask about reports that so many who wanted to help were prevented from doing so by the government, about ice and water trucks diverted elsewhere, about physicians and other health care providers told to stay home, about FEMA emergency phone lines busy for hours on end.

When Michael Brown admitted to reporters that he didn't know thousands of survivors were stranded at the New Orleans convention center without food or water, even though T.V. journalists had been reporting that fact for hours, his appearance before us today became inevitable.

We will ask Mr. Brown's opinion of why all residents weren't evacuated; why the levee system failed; why relief and medical supplies were so slow in arriving. And we will do so with the unfortunate knowledge that more than one study or exercise gave officials at all levels ample notice about a big storm and what could happen along the Gulf Coast, particularly New Orleans.

FEMA scientists participated in the now widely known exercise called Hurricane Pam in July of 2004, an exercise that predicted with eerie similarity Katrina's impact on New Orleans, including an evacuation of a million people, overflowing levees, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of buildings.

Dr. Kathleen Tierney, director of the Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said on a recent radio program that government missteps along the Gulf Coast were absolutely unavoidable.

It was common knowledge, she said, that the levees could not withstand more than a category 3 storm, that thousands of residents without cars would be stuck if an evacuation order was given, and that hesitancy in issuing mandatory evacuations would prove devastating.

BROWN: Even 2003's Isabel, a much smaller hurricane, offered lessons for FEMA, based on oversight hearings we held in this committee. Two years ago in Virginia, we heard disturbing tales of slow federal responses and nearly invisible coordination.

We don't know yet why FEMA failed. That's why we are having this hearing and why we continue to gather documents and why our investigation will soon be on the ground in New Orleans and elsewhere.

At the end of the day, I suspect we will find that government at all levels failed the people of Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama and the Gulf Coast.

I think we will hear from Michael Brown, for example, that there simply was no unified command structure or clear lines of authority in Louisiana. That means we are confronted with profound questions about not only what went wrong with FEMA, but what may be wrong with our governments at all levels when it comes to disaster preparations and response at this level.

Are we lacking a culture of urgency, a culture of getting things done? Or is it even when we have the best possible planning and predictions available, we come face to face with the vast divide between policy creation and policy implementation?

After Katrina, the American people are wise to the fact that a policy that cannot be implemented effectively is no policy at all. This committee's charge is to address the life and death difference between theory and practice.

Members will have seven days to submit written statements for the record. And I ask unanimous consent, Mr. Taylor, Mississippi; Mr. Jefferson, Louisiana, and Mr. Melancon, who is currently on a plane coming back from his region, be permitted to participate in today's hearings.

Without objection, it is so ordered.

In our opening statements, we are going to recognize today's first witness, Michael Brown, who is the former Department of Homeland Security undersecretary of emergency preparedness and response and director of FEMA.

It's our policy we swear all witnesses.

Mr. Brown, you have been here before. It's our policy that we swear all witnesses in before your testimony, so if you would rise with me and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Thank you.

Your entire written statement is part of the record, but you are recognized for an opening statement.

DAVIS: And as we said earlier, you can have whatever time you need.

Thank you for being with us.

BROWN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to start out by saying that, you know, no longer being on the hot seat at FEMA, it is, indeed, a pleasure to be here.

And I want to say also that I agree with you completely regarding the premise of these hearings. Lessons can be learned and should be learned. That was always my philosophy at FEMA. It was what we called a ramp (ph) program, where we always looked, after every disaster, every incident, at remedial actions and what we could do to improve things.

I also want to say that I admire the efforts of many members of this committee, including you, Mr. Chairman, to actually get outside of Washington, D.C., and see what's going on in the field. I think the more you do that, the better information that you will get and the better you will understand what took place, not only in Hurricane Katrina, but what goes in disasters all over this country.

The response of the government at all levels to Hurricane Katrina has come under some criticism. Some of it's valid, and I'll tell you some of it is just not valid.

FEMA must be understood in the context of what we do and how we do it before we decide to start Monday morning quarterbacking what took place, and so I think it's really important to understand what the role of FEMA is and what we do.

Likewise, there have been some criticisms leveled against me personally, and so I would like to take time later in this statement to address some of those.

As everyone on this committee certainly understands, you can't believe everything that you read in the newspapers, or everything that you see on television.

To understand the role that FEMA undertook in Hurricane Katrina and all the other disasters that we have successfully handled throughout my tenure and the tenure of others, it's important to understand the basics of emergency management in the United States.

At its most basic level, emergency management can best be described as a cycle. You first prepare for a disaster. You then respond to the disaster. You recover from the disaster. And finally, you start mitigating against future disasters based on what you have learned.

This cycle is the standard throughout the entire world. It doesn't vary anywhere in the world.

These four pillars that I just described -- prepare, respond, recover, and mitigate -- is how any effective emergency management organization, agency, directorate must be organized in order to be effective and to help citizens in times of emergencies.

Emergency management begins at the local level. Municipal and county governments are best suited to understand the needs and capabilities of their locales. Mayors, city councilmen, county commissioners, county administrators, parish presidents, all of these people are in a unique position to understand both the capabilities of their communities and the vulnerabilities of their communities.

Local governments develop the operations plan by which their communities are going to respond to disasters, either natural or manmade.

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

The reason that this primary responsibility, this first response is at the local level is that it's inherently impractical, totally impractical for the federal government to respond to every disaster of whatever size in every community across this country.

BROWN: It breaks my heart to think about the disasters that we respond to as FEMA, and to think about also the disasters that we don't respond to -- the small town in Wyoming that has a tornado that wipes out five homes. We don't respond to that, yet those people suffered as much as any other people that we might respond to.

The role of the federal government is not and should not ever be that of a first responder. The role of the federal government in emergency management is generally that of a coordinator and a supporter. The federal government develops national policies and assists the state and locals.

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

These roles are also fully supported by the basic concept of federalism, recognizing that sovereign states have the primary responsibility for emergency preparedness and response in their jurisdictions.

For example, governors have control over the National Guard. Law enforcement is primarily a local responsibility.

I think if you ask any of your constituents, any citizens in this country, they understand that fire protection, police protection, emergency medical care are clearly a local responsibility.

Now, many may be surprised to learn that FEMA is not a first responder.

BROWN: Many may be surprised to learn that, guess what, FEMA doesn't own fire trucks; we don't own ambulances; we don't own search and rescue equipment. In fact, the only search and rescue or emergency equipment that we own is a very small cadre to protect some property that we own around the country. FEMA is a coordinating agency. We are not a law enforcement agency.

It has always been my contention that the all-hazards approach is the approach that the federal government should take towards emergency management. By that I mean that if we adopt a cycle of preparing through training, exercises, planning, we respond to disasters with those that we have trained with, exercised with, worked with, we recover through rebuilding and reconstruction, we mitigate by enforcing and helping develop building codes, standards, protocols, retrofits.

If we do all of those things in an all-hazards approach, that means that we can respond to any disaster anywhere, regardless of what causes that disaster, whether it's man-made, natural, or a terrorist event.

But I want to emphasize that if we break that cycle and if we break that concept of federalism, we minimize our effectiveness and maximize our potential for failure.

Every level of government in this country has a role to play, including individuals. Individuals must take personal responsibility for being prepared. First responders may not be able to get to them quickly.

And in fact, in speeches that I give all over the country when I talk about preparedness, I always ask individuals this: Do you want to be the person that causes the first responder to either lose their life or become injured because you didn't take the basic steps yourself as an individual to be prepared? Individuals have a responsibility in this system of emergency management also.

Local governments must be prepared to respond just as well, because, as simple as it seems, disasters always occur in local communities. Locals are the first responders, and they have the primary responsibility to respond on behalf of their communities.

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

BROWN: FEMA cannot come in and be the first responder, but we can come in and help them train and exercise and learn how to do their job and be prepared for any kind of disaster.

People in the country might be surprised to learn that FEMA is a very small agency. They hear that FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security has over 180,000 employees, and a budget of some $42 billion.

FEMA has less than 3,000 employees. And if you take away the disaster relief fund, we have an annual operating budget of less than $1 billion dollars.

We are a very small organization within a very large organization.

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

What happens when we do that? When FEMA responds, we become a partner with the state. We establish a unified command structure -- a unified command structure that has worked well throughout 150-plus disasters that I have overseen since being at FEMA.

This unified command structure allows the federal, state, and local governments to work hand-in-hand, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of each level, distributing the resources and assets according to how they can best be utilized, and recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the state, federal and local governments so we can best respond to help our citizens.

And it is only through such a unified command structure, coupled with an incident management system within that unified command structure -- and actually, an incident command structure has been recognized by fire departments and the Forest Service and others for decades in this country.

But it is only through that kind of unified command structure that we can be successful when we respond to a disaster.

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

But what was our role during Hurricane Katrina? FEMA began monitoring Tropical Depression 12 long before it became a hurricane -- almost a full week before it made landfall in Louisiana. FEMA prepositioned supplies, equipment and manpower in areas where they were out of harm's way so that that equipment and that manpower would not itself become a victim of Hurricane Katrina.

We prepositioned those assets so that we can move them in rapidly when it's safe to do so.

FEMA conducted daily video teleconferences to learn the states' needs, to find out what we could do to best help them coordinate their response, and to respond to any requests that the states might have made of us that they needed in being prepared.

The hurricane liaison teams worked closely with the National Hurricane Center -- FEMA people actually in the National Hurricane Center to provide us the most updated information so we would know what we could tell the states and what the states needed to know.

We established several mobilization centers throughout the Gulf states. Again, these mobilization centers were not in downtown New Orleans. They weren't in Pascagoula. They were located out of harm's way so they themselves would not become disaster victims -- and we could move in after the hurricane made landfall.

BROWN: FEMA activated and deployed the national disaster medical teams. We activated and deployed the urban search and rescue teams. We activated and deployed the rapid needs assessment teams. We activated and deployed the emergency response teams to all of the potentially affected states.

We sent federal coordinating officers, our eyes and ears on the ground, to each of the state emergency operation centers in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana prior to landfall, so that we could know everything that the state needed to know, that they could convey back to us.

The American Red Cross, one of our partners, established shelters and feeding stations in each of the affected areas. The National Emergency Assistance Compact, EMAC, was activated, so that other states, in partnership with FEMA and the affected states, could move supplies and resources in.

I want this committee to know that FEMA pushed forward with everything that it had, every team, every asset that we had, in order to help what we saw as being a potentially catastrophic disaster. FEMA was prepared to fulfill its role as a partner in responding.

The way that FEMA works with state and local officials is well- established, and it's worked well. FEMA designates the federal coordinating officer to go to the state emergency operations center so that from that moment on, from the moment that our FCO, that federal coordinating officer, lands in an emergency operations center, he or she is hooked up with the state coordinating officers, so that we can have a unified command structure and we can know what the states need and we can start reacting to that before the disaster occurs, before the hurricane makes landfall.

These two persons in the ideal situation work together in the same room. They sit at conference tables like this. They know what they need to do. They work as a team. They feed those requests, those requirements into the emergency support functions, such as transportation, mass care, energy, so that we know what they need, and we can respond and help them get the assets they need.

BROWN: When the needs are identified, the coordinators assess that, so we know where best to utilize those resources and where to send them.

This is exactly -- exactly -- the approach that FEMA used in 2004 to the historic four hurricanes that struck Florida. This is exactly the approach that FEMA used during the Columbia space shuttle disaster that stretched all the way from Texas through New Mexico, Arizona and California. This is exactly the system that FEMA used in the historic outbreak of tornadoes in the Midwest, where small communities were obliterated from the face of the earth. And this is the exact system that FEMA used in the outbreak of wildfires in California in 2003.

I emphasize that because it is also the same unified command structure that FEMA used in Mississippi, in Alabama, and Florida this year when we responded to Hurricane Katrina.

Unfortunately, this is the approach that FEMA had great difficulty in getting established within Louisiana. This exact approach worked well in Mississippi and Alabama and Florida. I had some of our best, most competent coordinators in those states, in all of the states, to do everything we could to assist them.

In retrospect, I got to tell you that I am very glad that on Sunday morning I was on the news shows talking, and I was pushing my staff to find out, has the governor of Louisiana, has the mayor ordered a mandatory evacuation? We could not get the definitive answer that they had or they were going to.

So I went on the news shows Sunday morning, and I said, uncharacteristically of me, that I don't care what the governors are saying and I don't care what the mayors are saying, if you live in New Orleans, evacuate and get out of that city now.

I assume that today some of you are going to ask me whether I did all that I could, or whether I would have done anything differently. The answer is yes. Of course. And I want to talk about that, because we can always improve how we respond to disasters.

I do believe there are a couple of specific mistakes that I made that I want to put on the table right now.

First, I failed initially to set up a series of regular briefings to the media about what FEMA was doing throughout the Gulf Coast region. And instead, I became tied to the news shows, going on the news shows early in the morning and late at night, and that was just a mistake. We should have been feeding that information to the press and in the manner and in the time that we wanted to, instead of letting the press drive us.

Second, I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together. I just couldn't pull that off.

I want to spend just a minute, Mr. Chairman, if I can, to discuss a little bit about the personal charges that have been leveled against me.

While FEMA was trying to respond to probably the largest natural disaster in the history of this country, a catastrophic disaster that the president has described covering an area the size of Great Britain -- I have heard 90,000 square miles -- unless you have been there and seen it, you don't realize exactly how bad and how big it was -- but in the middle of trying to respond to that, FEMA's press office became bombarded with requests to respond immediately to false statements about my resume and my background.

Ironically, it started with an organization called horsesass.org, that on some blog published a false, and, frankly, in my opinion, defamatory statement that the media just continued to repeat over and over. Next, one national magazine not only defamed me, but my alma mater, the Oklahoma City University School of Law, in one sentence alone leveling six false charges.

But that was just a prelude to what was to come. Time magazine then called the press office while I was in Baton Rouge trying to coordinate the response and was told that I supposedly embellished my resume and was given 45 minutes to respond to their story.

BROWN: The story wasn't true, but apparently that doesn't matter. For almost 20 years, you see, I have worked in state, local and federal government.

I started out as an intern while I was in undergraduate school in the city of Edmond, Oklahoma, which at the time was the fastest growing city in Oklahoma. We were issuing sometimes upwards of 1,000 building permits per month. That's a lot of growth.

I started out as an intern in the planning office. I then became the assistant to the city manager, where I was liaison to the Emergency Services Division, the police and fire departments. I ended up drafting the emergency operations plan. I ended up putting together with a committee the emergency operations center. I worked closely with the emergency, fire and police departments.

I went on those runs, and I know what it is like to see a family's house burn to the ground because they weren't ready, they had a Christmas tree that was faulty, lights that were faulty. I know what it's like to see men and women in police and fire departments put their lives on the line.

I have represented cops throughout my legal career. I have represented police departments. I guess I did a good enough job in negotiating on behalf of the city of Edmond during their labor relations that later the unions came and asked me to negotiate on their behalf.

You see, I get it when it comes to incident command systems. I get it when it comes to emergency management. I know what it's all about.

But if that's not enough, I came to FEMA as general counsel. As general counsel, I had to learn about all of the programs in FEMA. I had to understand what all of this emergency management cycle at the federal level was about.

I was then asked by the president after September 11, and running operations from FEMA headquarters on September 11 to become the deputy director.

I have overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I am doing. And I think I do a pretty darn good job of it.

The media even claimed that -- falsely stated I was never an adjunct professor. I find that funny because there's a gentleman in the room right now who has represented me on many occasions that I actually asked to come in and fill in for me one time and come and speak to my class that I was teaching. So maybe we're both hallucinating about teaching that class, but I did teach law school. And, in fact, I taught legislation and I taught state and local government law. I know how municipal governments work.

Interesting, Time then quoted my employer, one of my first employers after law school, and said I had done a lousy job. I guess they wanted me in the middle of the disaster to run back to Virginia, dig through my papers and find the personnel records that talked about the outstanding job that I had done.

But I guess it's the media's job. But I don't like it. I think it's false. It came at the wrong time. And I think it led potentially to me being pulled out of Louisiana, because it made me somewhat ineffective.

BROWN: My experience at FEMA has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. The men and women of FEMA -- every single one of them are dedicated to the mission of saving lives, sustaining lives, of building and keeping this robust emergency management system working as well as it can.

FEMA has faced some trying times. If you think it's difficult to merge Compaq and IBM -- ask Holly (ph) what she thinks of that -- try to merge FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security, and then try to reorganize that again from having been an independent agency.

The people of FEMA are tired. The people of FEMA are tired of being beat up -- and they don't deserve it. The men and women of FEMA, the career civil servants, the career people that I work with are dedicated to doing the absolute best they can to help communities because they chose to come to work at FEMA. And they deserve better than what they are getting.

Mr. Chairman, it's my belief that FEMA did a good job in the Gulf states. We could do things better. We could improve them. And I hope that, through these hearings, we can find ways to not only improve FEMA and make it better, but that we can strengthen the emergency management system in this country.

Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to answer any questions that the committee might have.

DAVIS: Mr. Brown, thank you very much. We are going to get into some fairly lengthy questioning shortly -- organized by timeline and then by subject matter.

But let me begin by asking an important question that are on a lot of people's minds, and give you the time you need to answer it:

Based on what you know now, what would you do differently? And specifically, what would you have done to evacuate New Orleans sooner? What would you have done to a ensure unified command? What would you have done to address the security needs at the Superdome and then throughout the city of New Orleans?

What would you have done to maintain communications? And what would you have done to get the National Guard or the military there sooner, knowing now what you know and seeing the problems that ensued?

And what were the biggest mistakes that you think FEMA made -- and you being their command and control?

BROWN: Mr. Chairman, that's a pretty darn good compound question -- if you would give me a minute to write down all the subsets...

DAVIS: I'll let you run with it.

BROWN: ... I'll be happy to cover them.

DAVIS: We want to give you an opportunity first. Then we are going to go through the timeline and a number of other questions.

BROWN: Let me start out by addressing the premise of the question, which I don't entirely agree with -- that what could FEMA have done in terms of the evacuation? What could FEMA have done in terms of communications, law enforcement?

Those are not FEMA roles. FEMA doesn't evacuate communities.

BROWN: FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications. But having said that, I have got to tell you in hindsight there are things that I, as the former director of FEMA, wish that I had done that maybe would address those particular areas.

First and foremost, when we started the SVTS, the video teleconferences that we do with the state and locals, I should have pushed harder to both Louisiana -- particularly to Louisiana, because I, with all due respect, I do not want to make this partisan, so I can't help it that Alabama and Mississippi are governed by Republican governors and Louisiana is governed by a Democratic governor.

That's not an issue with me. We go to every state regardless of who the governor is and do what we can, but I didn't have a problem with evacuations in Mississippi or Alabama. They were doing it. Jeb Bush had already ordered evacuations through the Keys as Katrina was making its way through that area.

My mistake was in recognizing that for whatever reason that we might want to discuss later, but for whatever reason, Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco were reticent to order a mandatory evacuation. And if I, Mike Brown individual, could have done something to convince them that this was the big one, and they needed to order a mandatory evacuation, I would have done it. Maybe I could have gotten on the telephone with General Landreneau in the emergency operations center and said: General, get some of those National Guard troops out there and start driving buses and pick people up and take them out of there. Maybe we could have done something like that. That's all speculation.

DAVIS: Is there any federal authority anywhere in evacuation where the federal government can come in, in the case of reticence on the part of state, that you are aware of?

BROWN: Mr. Chairman, not that I am aware of.

In terms of communications, one of the things that I didn't mention in the litany of things that we pre-positioned is something called a MERS unit, our mobile emergency response system. Those are vehicles that are command and control units that have satellite hook- ups, telephone hook-ups, video hook-ups, enable us to do communications.

I pre-positioned those in all three states, so that we would have communications wherever we needed it. I eventually sent one of those command units -- in fact, it's one of the largest ones we have, called Red October -- I eventually sent one of those into New Orleans for Mayor Nagin to use.

In retrospect, I wish I had done that four days earlier. Had I done it four days earlier, though, guess what? It probably wouldn't have gotten there. So I am now second-guessing myself, and perhaps I should have pre-positioned it there before Katrina made landfall.

But again, that's not the role of the federal government. That's Mike Brown Monday morning quarterbacking, having seen everything that took place and trying to figure out, OK, now seeing everything that did not work in Louisiana, if I had known it beforehand, what could I have done?

DAVIS: And that's what I am telling you. Law enforcement is purely a state and local role, Mr. Chairman. I don't know what I could have done, again, except get to the phone with General Landreneau and suggest that he get the best National Guard troops that he has, or make a request to the president to federalize National Guard, do something, or maybe I could have started that earlier.

But law enforcement -- no, FEMA does not do law enforcement.

My biggest mistake was not recognizing, by Saturday, that Louisiana was dysfunctional.

DAVIS: Dr. Max Mayfield, who is the head of the Hurricane Center, is quoted on September 5th as saying, They knew that this one was different. I don't think Mike Brown or anyone else in FEMA could have any reason to have any problems with our calls. They were told how bad this would be.

You knew that Katrina would be an extraordinary -- that it would be catastrophic, beyond anything the Gulf had ever seen.

In all honesty, was FEMA really prepared or trained to handle this massive a disaster, even though you had prepared assets, and so on -- a lot of problems with getting stuff back into the city, getting ice, water, basic needs in there?

BROWN: Mr. Chairman, this event stretched FEMA beyond its capabilities. There's no question about that.

It did it in several ways. One is FEMA, over the past several years, has lost a lot of manpower. At one point during my tenure, because of assessments by the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA has lost -- at one point, we were short 500 people in an organization of about 2,500.

You do the math. That's pretty significant.

I managed to get that down to a more manageable number, but it's still a significant number.

FEMA has suffered from the inability to grow to meet the demands. By that I mean that the more successful FEMA becomes, the greater the expectations are that FEMA will take on something larger and larger and larger.

DAVIS: But you have the ability to call on other agencies, didn't you, down there?

BROWN: Yes.

DAVIS: And to get other things. FEMA is small by itself, but your ability to coordinate with other agencies and the assets of the federal government were greater -- and we still weren't ready even with that.

DAVIS: Is that fair to say?

BROWN: It is.

And Mr. Chairman, I have not figured out, but I intend to -- I intend to figure it out -- why it is that prior to landfall on Saturday and Sunday, FEMA is issuing mission assignments, for example to DOD to provide air and ground transport support as directed by FEMA in the state of Louisiana. That we are asking DOD to help us establish a mobilization center on August 28. That we are, indeed, asking for a bed count alert through our FCC for potential movement of beds and shelters to DOD. That we are requesting strategic air lift support for eight swift water rescue teams to be transported from Travis Air Force Base and March Air Force Base to Lafayette Regional in Baton Rouge.

I need to find out why some of those requests that were put into the system either did or did not end up actually taking place, because the system was there to do what it was supposed to do, but I have no record sometimes of whether some of those things actually got to where we asked them to go to.

DAVIS: We will establish -- we will have a timeline that we are going to go through with you, that we can go through, when things were requested and what occurred as we go through with other questions. I just want to kind of get this out to start with.

I am going to give -- Mr. Jefferson is recognized for 10 minutes.

JEFFERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the chairman for permitting me to participate in the meeting today.

As you know, I am not an official member of this committee or this inquiry, but I think there's so much at stake in Louisiana and in the whole region that I thought it was important to come and participate to whatever extent I can, and as I believe that Mr. Melancon and Mr. Taylor will also find their way here to become involved.

I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you, Mr. Brown, laying the blame for FEMA's failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans.

I think it's fair to say that perhaps mistakes were made all around, but I don't think the response of the federal government can be explained on the basis of, as you have said here, you could not persuade the governor and the mayor to sit down and coordinate a response.

As you probably know, Governor Blanco requested a disaster declaration from the president three days before the storm made landfall. And the president declared a disaster two days before the hurricane hit. So the local folks, I think, made an accurate request for support.

But even if they hadn't made any request for help at all, even if they were plainly, as you have said, dysfunctional, which I am not here to defend them, but I don't believe that is an appropriate characterization of what happened here, FEMA had already been engaged in exercises that would, I think, put the lie to any notion that this was to be handled by local people.

For instance, in your own document, as a result of this Hurricane Pam exercise we have heard so much about here lately, it says at one point this: A strong hurricane hitting heavily populated southeast Louisiana will create a catastrophic event which the state would not be able to cope without massive help from neighboring states and the federal government.

The geographic situation of southern Louisiana and the densely populated New Orleans area would complicate response problems and quickly overwhelm the state's responses.

You've said here that FEMA itself had capability issues and was overwhelmed. How much more would one think that a state or a local government would be overwhelmed by such an event?

It further reads, A catastrophic event will produce a chaotic and degraded environment with possible losses and malfunction of various layers and sections of all levels of government.

A major storm would create a possible need to reconstitute local and state government authorities' responsibilities, capabilities, missions, and resources -- meaning that the normal response one might expect of state and local government in this situation was not even contemplated to be available.

And then the Department of Homeland Security's national planning for major hurricane includes following assumptions -- that most of the local, fire, police, and other response personnel and officials are victims of the storm and aren't able to coordinate immediate response resources.

State and local capabilities -- triaging and treating casualties in the disaster area are overwhelmed. And the national response plan talks about proactive federal response.

A catastrophic event, it says, including a major natural disaster that results in extraordinary levels of casualties and damage, quote, it says here, almost immediately exceeds resources -- almost immediately exceeds resources normally available to state, local, tribal, and private sector authorities in the impacted area.

The response capabilities, it says, of local jurisdictions may be insufficient and quickly overwhelmed.

Now, we all knew from the various scenarios that were created out of the Hurricane Pam exercise by the Hurricane Center at LSU, by the 2004 National Geographic report, which chilling report of what might happen, in the event of a Category 4 hurricane -- a 3 or higher.

And in September 2004, the U.S. commissioner on ocean policy submitted a report to the president on the same matter. And even the newspapers who ran articles that talked about the threat of this catastrophe occurring.

Now, if there's more than a matter of the media not having the proper briefings and more than the matter of the governor and the mayor not being able to sit down and coordinate a response.

The response that was contemplated was a federal response, and not a state and local response.

I am more interested in what actually happened down there before landfall -- and about whether there were meetings with city and state officials before landfall and, if there were, how many there were and where they were and what happened there.

JEFFERSON: I am more interested in what actually happened down there before landfall and about whether there were meetings with city and state officials before landfall, and if there were, how many there were and where they were and what happened there; about the contacts by phone or in person with DHS or with the secretary before landfall; and how you dealt with Mayor Nagin, Governor Blanco, Governor Barbour in the week prior to the landfall; and what resources and supplies did FEMA and other federal agencies deploy before the landfall; and, to the extent you're aware of it, how did the pre-Katrina deployment of resources differ from the pre-deployment of resources prior to Hurricane Rita.

Now, that's before the landfall. And if you want me to stop here, I can stop and let you deal with that. But I think also after the landfall, here's what we know on the ground in Louisiana: that no matter how the statements go up here today and no matter how the matters get described, the help just didn't come, and people suffered from it.

The president himself said early on that the response was unacceptable. He, since that time, made statements which are more complete about some of the failings and shortcomings.

And I think it's real important if we're going to find out what and make sure it doesn't happen again because I'm not interested myself in pointing fingers at you or any particular individual. I hope you know that.

I simply want to find out what happened and how we can prevent it from happening again, because what happened here has already occurred. People have already suffered. We've already had terrible losses.

And it's in the wake of this that we're here today trying to figure out what happened, because you owe it to all those people who suffered to answer their questions. We owe it to the families that are out there now who don't know why they're in the situation they're in and who have lost loved ones and lost property and lost a sense of place, a sense of being at home that they may never recover.

And so it's very important for us to justify to them why the government didn't do all it could to make their situations come out better.

But this is principally prospective in its value. Because, as I've said, they've already gone through that suffering. We're looking now to how we can make sure that our government works better for people in the wake of these disasters, which we see are coming more ferociously and more frequently than we've ever seen them in recent times before. And so the preparation has to be equal to the challenges that we face.

And our region of the world, unfortunately, is probably facing other risks out there, the dangers from these same sort of events.

And so for me and for others from the region, it's really important that we're able to reassure our people that the government is handling this problem and handling it properly.

So I'm really troubled by the response when one asks, What would you have done differently, and did you make mistakes? and you crystallize it to these two matters of not having the appropriate media briefings and not being able to get Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down and coordinate a response.

JEFFERSON: I think that's a very weak explanation of what happened and a very incomplete explanation of what happened. And I would hope we could look forward to a fuller explanation before the day is gone because I don't think that's going to cut it, really.

The federal government -- I mean, FEMA is there for a reason. And you say it's there to be an honest broker; it's there to coordinate the levels of government but it's not a first responder.

In the ordinary course of events, perhaps that's how things go. But one has to have the government match the threat that's out there.

And everyone knew what might happen to that region in the event of the kind of catastrophe that Hurricane Katrina posed. And therefore, the preparation for it, by your own documents from the government -- all of them contemplated something quite different.

Yet we seem to have proceed in quite the usual way as if we expected, not these catastrophic, horrible events that could have occurred, but if we were simply going about some other set of disaster planning that didn't pose these huge, extraordinary risks.

And it can't be approached that way and expect results to come out any differently than they did, which is to say that the coordination effort, if that was the object of FEMA, failed. The coordination effort, if it was to get local people working together, of course, failed. If it was to get resources in place, failed. If it was to reach people at the time they needed help, it all failed.

And I think the results are quite stark in that regard. And I hope and we have a right to expect a fuller explanation of what happened from you and from the other persons who were leading the agency before the day is done, before these hearings are done.

Mr. Chairman, I have specific questions, but I can (inaudible) about landfall -- he may, before landfall, and then I have a few about after landfall. But if you can take the before landfall ones that I inquired about earlier I would appreciate a response to that.

DAVIS: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you, Congressman Jefferson.

I am glad that you were there, because you and I can talk firsthand about what we saw and what took place.

Before landfall, I had numerous conversations with Governor Blanco specifically asking about mandatory evacuations and whether she was going to order those or not. I never understood what the reticence was in not ordering those mandatory evacuations, but I did push and push her on that regard.

JEFFERSON: If I might, when was that?

BROWN: That was on Saturday -- Saturday and Sunday. Saturday and Sunday, when we are both -- I think she participated in Saturday's VTC, but I don't recall specifically.

BROWN: Both myself and the staff at FEMA pushed the state EOC, and I personally pushed the governor, for mandatory evacuations prior to landfall.

The other thing I think is important to note before landfall is -- and you didn't have the benefit of the statement, but it's in my statement -- about all of the things that we pushed forward in Louisiana prior to landfall, because, as you correctly point out, she made a request for a presidential disaster declaration. President Bush signed that. That enabled FEMA to go ahead and surge and start prepositioning all of those assets.

One of the things that I did -- that FEMA did that was unusual in this case was that we sent a federal coordinating officer -- although not in that capacity, but an individual of that capability -- and another career FEMA person into Mayor Nagin's office so that they would be there prior to landfall.

FEMA did that because, having for the first time in the history of the organization put together catastrophic disaster planing, and having specifically chosen New Orleans because of the potential for a catastrophic disaster, we knew that the mayor was probably going to have some problems; that any mayor there was going to have some problems.

So FEMA thought it was incumbent upon us to make certain that there was someone on the ground to be our eyes and ears within the mayor's office so that we could help that mayor in whatever needs they might have.

And we did the same thing in the state emergency operations center, too.

And, Mr. Jefferson, I know that you saw what I saw when I was there on Sunday and Sunday evening and Monday, which was no one in charge. I couldn't find out who was driving the resource requirement, who was making the decisions about what needed to be done.

You saw that middle room, the room where we sat with the president and had the briefing. On Sunday and Monday, that room was chaos.

BROWN: I remember walking into a small room like that in some rural county in Florida. I don't remember what county it was and it's immaterial. And I remember commenting to some of the folks that were there that, wow, this team had its act together because they had -- we are county level now, in your case, parish level -- they had someone there who was their county coordinator. They had their ESS, their emergency support, functions set up.

And we walked in, FEMA walked in, knew who was in control, who was making the decisions, where the resource requests were coming in and how those were being fed out.

And I never found that in Baton Rouge. I never saw that room function the way it should have functioned.

We put people in the mayor's office...

JEFFERSON: May I suggest FEMA had the responsibility for that? Go ahead.

BROWN: We put those people in the mayor's office because we knew, based upon Hurricane Pam, that exercise, that any mayor may have a difficult time communicating and get those resource requests in to us. So we specifically put people in there to help us feed those resource requests.

On Tuesday, the governor and I got in the helicopter and flew to the Superdome, landed and walked into the mayor. And I was ready for bear because I was mad at the mayor. I was madder than a wet hen at the mayor at that time.

And my staff did what they were supposed to do. The FEMA staff did their job. They sat down with Mayor Nagin and they said, Mayor, the FEMA director is going to come in here. We promise you, after the cameras disappear, you have had your little photo op and everything, he's going to sit down, and he's going to ask you, 'What do you need?' He's going to ask you, 'What are the priorities for those needs?'

And lo and behold, I walk in and photo ops occur. Then I sit down with him and he does -- he's got his list there of everything he needs and the priorities.

And I turned to Phil Parr (ph), the FCO on the ground, and I say,

Phil, you guys are doing a good job. The mayor's got his list here. Feed those into the system. Let's help this guy.

BROWN: The state EOC was incapable of doing that, and it didn't happen.

Now, I'm not here to point blame. I'm not here to point fingers. I'm here just to tell the truth. I'm here to tell what I saw and what I witnessed. And that's what we witnessed.

JEFFERSON: Would it surprise you to know that the mandatory evacuation ordered by Governor Blanco was ordered on Sunday at 11 o'clock? And this was the same time exactly, as far as we have, as Harrison and Jackson counties in Mississippi ordered the mandatory evacuations?

BROWN: Yes, I'm.

JEFFERSON: It would surprise you to know that?

BROWN: In fact, I was on the phone to Governor Blanco before she made that call with Mayor Nagin...

JEFFERSON: But would it surprise you to know that?

BROWN: ... encouraging her to do that as rapidly as possible.

JEFFERSON: OK. But would it surprise you to know that this occurred at the same time as the evacuations in Harrison County and...

BROWN: No, because if you go back and you look at the tracking and the reports from the National Hurricane Center, I think those evacuations made in Mississippi were made at approximately the same time...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: I think the evacuation order in New Orleans was made a day late.

JEFFERSON: Well, they were made at about the same time. And are you saying that FEMA did everything right in Mississippi and Alabama and only Louisiana had problems?

BROWN: No, I'm saying that the system worked in Mississippi and Alabama. The system did not work in Louisiana.

Congressman Jefferson, we can't deny that point: that it worked in the other states and it did not work in Louisiana.

JEFFERSON: Well, would you be surprised to know that people in Mississippi and Alabama have complaints about FEMA's performance similar to the ones that we have had in Louisiana?

BROWN: I'm sorry, could you...

JEFFERSON: Would it surprise you to know that folks in Mississippi and Alabama have complaints which are similar to ours about FEMA's lack of a response?

BROWN: Congressman, every state in every disaster has a complaint about FEMA.

JEFFERSON: I mean, complaints like ours, were you saying; that FEMA wasn't there, didn't show up in time, didn't do its job right?

BROWN: Yes, I can go into any disaster.

(CROSSTALK)

JEFFERSON: I mean, not little complaints; big complaints like the ones that we had, would you be surprised at that?

BROWN: Congressman, I can go into any disaster and find a county commissioner, find a mayor, find someone, because no disaster is perfect, and there are mistakes made in every single disaster.

The simple point that I'm trying to make here is: The system was functioning in those states. The system was not functioning in Louisiana.

JEFFERSON: And I'm trying to figure out whether you think that this was all the fault of the mayor and the governor, or whether you think that FEMA's coordinating responsibilities that it had in that area didn't take place appropriately, that they didn't use the assets appropriately and that sort of thing.

Because New Orleans, of course, is a little different than some of the other places. You want to make a distinction about what New Orleans should have done earlier. If that be the case, then FEMA should have applied its resources earlier and more effectively, it seems to me -- its coordinating responsibilities and other things it had to do there.

If it's different in any significant way, then one has to approach it differently, it would seem to me.

So I can tell you, I was in some rooms with you where we were all concerned about how things were working. But I don't think that I can sit here and bear witness to the fact that it was because of a lack or a dysfunction between the mayor and the governor.

There was some concern, as you may know, about what the federal response was going to be -- what role the federal government would take, whether it would take a stronger role. And there was some concern about how the National Guard and the active duty forces would coordinate their work.

I remember that very pointedly. And that seemed to be a point of contention between the governor and the president to some extent.

But before we get to that whole set of issues, when you went through the exercise with Pam, which assumed that everything bad that could go wrong, went wrong -- including not just poor communication between local officials, but no communication.

JEFFERSON: They assumed that nothing worked, that everything was blackened and there was no way to do anything.

And the question was, in any event, where it's so bad until the local folks are overwhelmed immediately, there's no communication, there's no coordination between the mayor and the governor or anybody else, in those circumstances -- and they came up with an appropriate response. And that response wasn't taken here. Why was that not taken/

Assuming that everything else was going wrong, tell me why the response that Pam contemplated under those circumstances wasn't undertaken.

BROWN: Pam was an exercise. Pam was the first time that the federal government, and particularly FEMA, has sat down and looked at the potential of a catastrophic disaster and our role in it.

And the public policy debate that now needs to occur between the administration and Congress is, what do we do? Do we muscle up FEMA? Do we muscle up NORTHCOM? Do we somehow tie NORTHCOM and FEMA together?

I mean, I don't want to just list those things. But there's any number of things that we can do so that FEMA can respond effectively to that catastrophic event.

Because I go back to my basic premise that FEMA is not -- we do not have the capability or the capacity to come into New Orleans and reestablish their government immediately. Even in the best of situations, that's going to take several days because you have an urban area, an urban area that was not evacuated, you have an urban area where the police and fire services have broken down and disintegrated, and you cannot, even the 5th Army or the 1st Army cannot turn on a dime and be there two hours after landfall and reconstitute that.

So, yes, we can have those policy debates all day long. And, frankly, I think Congress probably should have those policy debates all day long.

But the fact of the matter remains that New Orleans did not evacuate in the timeline it was anticipated in Hurricane Pam. The state did not utilize the National Guard, for example, to drive the buses that everybody has on their photographs, on their Web sites somewhere.

BROWN: None of those actions were taken, none of those actions took place, despite the cajoling and the persuasion and everything that we could do. And at this stage of the game, that is not the federal government's responsibility, that's a state and local responsibility.

JEFFERSON: I want to thank the chairman for permitting me this time.

And I just point out, that at the very end of this, the Stafford Act gave the authority under the exercise that we talked about, which contemplated that there was no coordination, there was no getting along, there was no talk and there was no anything with anyone. And that is the response that I was talking about that did not take place.

So I want to thank the chairman for permitting to ask this. I hope I get a chance to...

DAVIS: We'll get another round...

JEFFERSON: Thank you very much.

DAVIS: ... Mr. Jefferson.

Thank you.

Mr. Rogers?

ROGERS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Brown, I want to deal with the timeline -- specific timeline. And we need to be brief and terse and to the point with this.

First question, though, is how important in the greater scheme of things was the failure to evacuate New Orleans?

BROWN: Chairman Rogers, in my opinion, it was critical. The failure to evacuate was the tipping point for all the other things that either went wrong or were exacerbated.

For example, the disintegration of the police department you can tie it back to the lack of evacuation, because they couldn't handle that. The same with the fire department. The same with the spontaneous evacuation that occurred out of hotels into the convention center, separate and apart from the Superdome.

So I think that's a critical factor, which is why we pushed and pushed so hard to get that mandatory evacuation.

ROGERS: Was the failure to evacuate -- order to evacuate the proximate cause of most people's misery?

BROWN: Well, I'll give you a non-legal opinion to the proximate cause question...

(LAUGHTER)

... Congressman Rogers: Yes.

ROGERS: All right.

Now, when was the very first time that you or the public media began to look toward the Gulf Coast, where the hurricane finally hit, as a potential target?

ROGERS: When was the very first moment in time when that took place?

BROWN: It was Tuesday, August 23rd.

ROGERS: And what happened at that time?

BROWN: We began our monitoring, both at the regional level, at the FEMA headquarter level. And the hurricane liaison team, which is embedded in the National Hurricane Center, began monitoring at that point.

ROGERS: At that time, was there any warning given to the local officials?

BROWN: Not that I'm aware of.

ROGERS: All right.

But on Wednesday, August 24th, you formed the hurricane liaison team, right?

BROWN: We didn't form it. What we did was we activated it.

The hurricane liaison team is a small cadre of men and women that are actually based out of Atlanta. And they deployed to the hurricane center so they can start doing their job.

ROGERS: Now, who are those people? Are they local, state, federal officials?

BROWN: They're federal officials.

ROGERS: They're federal?

BROWN: They're FEMA employees.

ROGERS: So they went to the National Hurricane Center?

BROWN: They actually became operational Wednesday, August 24th, at 7:00 am.

ROGERS: And when was the first time then that notice was given, either public or private, to the officials of these states or cities that a bad hurricane was on the way toward them?

BROWN: That started on Thursday, August 25th, with our official daily video teleconferences with the regions, the hurricane center and all the potentially affected states. Those began on Thursday, August 25.

ROGERS: And who initiated those?

BROWN: FEMA does.

ROGERS: And who was connected to the other end of that?

BROWN: On those video conferences, you have the National Hurricane Center. You have the hurricane liaison teams. You have the Tropical Prediction Center. You have these other meteorologists; I don't remember their acronyms, but they provide us storm surge modeling, they provide us information about potential flooding because of ground moisture.

And then you have all of the ESF functions, all of the emergency support functions, that are part of the response effort involved in those. And then you have all of the potentially affected states: all of the states which might be affected -- which in this case would range from Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas -- all have the opportunity to participate in those video conferences.

ROGERS: Well, in this case, did those three states participate in the teleconferences?

BROWN: I'd have to go back and che