states, we'll say that i think it was matthew kerry, an economist at the time who said that if clay had become president in 1844, the civil war would have been postponed significantly. now, you know, how you can say that, i don't know. you, obviously, can't prove it, but he felt like that his economic policies would have helped to weaken slavery. and, therefore, taken away the major cause for a civil war. >> booktv was in frankfurt, kentucky, as part of our cities tour where we visit several southeastern cities over the next few months to bring you a taste of their literary history and culture. our partner in frankfurt kentucky was local affiliate further plant board. visit c-span.org/local content.

>> next on booktv, michael brown, former director of the federal emergency management agency, recalls his leadership of the agency during hurricane katrina. it's about an hour and 15 minutes. [inaudible conversations] >> hi. i guess we're ready the begin. good evening, welcome to the national press club. i'm jan king, i'm on the book and author committee, and we're so honored tonight to have as our guest michael brown. he'll be speaking to you all ant his book, "deadly indifference: the perfect political storm." copies of the book are available for purchase over there where nicole is sitting, and each sale benefits the eric freed heym national journalism library. no outside books will be allowed, please. and mr. brown will be signing

your copy after he gives his little talk here. so he'll be happy to do that for you. and before i begin, please, turn your cell phones off which means i have to turn mine off too. okay. and there's two events coming up at the national press club i want to announce. june 23rd, thursday night, we're going to have or neil gayman. he has his book, "american gods," the tenth anniversary edition, and this will be a ballroom event. and on august 1st we will have senator bob graham. he'll be discussing his keys to the kingdom in the conference rooms. i'm sure you all know that our guest, michael brown, served as the first undersecretary of homeland security for president george w. bush from 2003 to 2005. he was also director, deputy

director and general counsel of fema from 2001 to 2005. at the white house, he served on the consequence management committee comprised of cabinet deputies following the attacks of 9/11 and headed the white house transition team for emergency preparedness and response, department of homeland security. he also served on the national security council's deputies committee. al he is an oklahoma native, and -- also he is an oklahoma native, and he attended the university of central oklahoma, oklahoma university school of law and holds a juris doctorate in law. he has taught law at the oklahoma city university and university of denver on legislation, state and local government and national security. in his book, "deadly indifference," co-authored by

ted schwartz, michael brown poignantly describes the role of politics and a risk-aversion society facing natural or manmade disasters. in his book you will read many excerpts from if a journal mr. brown maintained when he was working for president george w. bush. eventually, his journal reached several hundred pages, and he thought that one day his wife and possibly his children or his grandchildren would read it, and they would come to understand why he agreed to take a job that took him so frequently away from home. whatever the case, he intended to keep the entries private. but four years after leaving the bush white house, he used them in writing of this book, "deadly indifference." mr. brown says that hurricane katrina was a disaster on many levels. every participant has his own version of the almost heroic personal actions taken in a

desperate race to beat the storm, protect the people and then ultimately blame fema. he feels that most people do not know what should have happened and that there were many self-serving spin books written in the aftermath. but mr. brown believes that people don't know the planning that was involved or the options available and rejected by high officials whose frequent indecision and occasionally bad choices changed a serious situation into a needlessly deadly one. secondly, he talks in the book about the lack of available documentation during katrina, but i'm going to let michael brown explain all that to you because he is the author of this book, and he knows it a lot more than i do. so, please, give me a warm press club welcome for michael brown. [applause] >> hi, everybody. thanks for coming out. i appreciate it. i was just thinking that, jan,

as you were talking, one of the things that struck me that i really hadn't thought about for a while in terms of this book, between your introduction and some of the people who are in this room, there's another story that hasn't been told that probably needs to be told about katrina. and that's all of the people, i heard this come up the other day, and i forget who asked me the question. but another reporter asked me the question, and then ray nagin was on the today show yesterday in the an interview with matt lauer when this question came up again about race. and how did race and social economics effect what took place in katrina. and i am astounded that that issue still comes up when you think about the men and the women who worked for the federal emergency management agency and dhs and, for that matter, the entire federal government. now, i know if you take x number -- i don't know what the number in dhs is now, when i

left it was 180,000 people. so i'm sure now it's at least 200,000, right? that's just the nature of government. but i'll tell you something, that population within dhs is no different than the general population, and i'm sure somewhere in that general population or in that specific population of dhs, there might be a bigot, there might be somebody who was thinking racially, i don't want to help those people, i don't want to do this, or they're poor and stupid. i can just imagine all the bigoted kinds of things that someone like that might be saying. but what we forget is that those civil servants go down to do a job, and they do it without respect to the politics, to the racial background, to the socioeconomic background or anything else of the people involved in that crisis. and that's something that as i think about some of you that i see here today and i think about matt lauer asking that question of ray nagin yesterday, i say shame on all of us. shame on all of us for allowing that to continue to be an issue

when this government or our society responds to a disaster. now, i don't want to place any sort ofty min miss attitude toward them, say let's just blow it off. i mean, let's be realistic. one of the problems that we had in hurricane katrina was something that was exposed, i think, for the first time to everybody in this country. and it is, it is a society where it's not like all of you smart people in this room. you got here by metro, you drove your car. i flew in today. i'll fly out tomorrow. i've got enough cash -- i'm not going to tell you where it is -- i have enough cash that if there's an attack tonight or tomorrow, i know i'll be able to go to hertz or somebody, and i'll be able to negotiate a deal to get a car, and i'll be able to somehow have enough cash to be able to buy gas to be able to get back to depp very.

but -- denver. but when you you are of of a grp that your life revolves around a four block area and you are totally dependent upon public transportation, you are totally dependent upon that little grocery store that's at the end of the block, the school's two block over this way, and the church or the synagogue is four blocks the other way, even if, even if mayor had ordered the evacuation of new orleans within the recommended 72 hours prior to it making landfall, asking those folks to somehow get outside of that comfort zone and go to an area where somebody was going to pick them up on a bus and take them to huey long and put them on a 757 or put them on an amtrak train and take them to houston or atlanta or somewhere else would be like asking any of us to leave this room and go to mars. but we can nicing -- recognizing

that fact of those folks who were in that situation is not racist. and recognizing that we have a segment of this population that that is how their lives are lived is not racist. that's simply a recognition of the complex population that we have in this country, and that sometimes, sometimes government leaders fail to recognize that asking somebody to do something is asking them something that's out of the extraordinary for them. so i don't know, it was, it was seeing you guys and thinking about all the work that all of you did during katrina that made me think about that, coupled with seeing that interview with matt lauer yesterday. there was a, there was a time in 1995 i had just given a speech outside san diego, california. it was on april 18th. and the next morning i got up and went to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast, and i noticed on the monitors in the hallway that there was some story about

an egg motion. i didn't pay much attention to it. walked back and realized that it was in oklahoma city. and then i realized that it was the murrah building, this is now on april 19th. so i went back to my room, and i tried to call a good friend of mine who's now a retired federal district judge. couldn't reach tim, he was in the federal courthouse across the alley from the murrah building. tried to call my good friend and lawyer throughout hurricane katrina, andy. his building was about a block away, couldn't reach him. couldn't reach my sister-in-law who worked a couple of blocks away from the murrah building. and it was my first exposure to how in the midst of a crisis our inability to communicate with each other -- look, i'm a kid that grew up in the oklahoma panhandle. and one of my first childhood memories is that of my father and my grandfather opening a cellar door and all of us watching a tornado blow by. but we survived, nothing happened to us. the murrah building was my first experience with an incident in

terms of a disaster. where i wouldn't reach my -- couldn't reach my friends, and i couldn't reach my relatives, and i learned probably beyond a week or so after that disaster by this scum bag named timothy mcveigh that someone who probably had as much influence on my life as my mother and my parents was my sunday schoolteacher. and rita lost her life in that bombing. then i think forward to september 11th, 2001. all of you know where you were. we were in big sky, montana, preparing a presentation to the national emergency managers association. i was the general counsel at the time despite what "time" magazine or others might think, i came in and worked my way up the ladder at fema. and we got on a c-130 and flew back here, went to andrews. the next day went over to the oval, albaugh went to new york.

and either that day or the next day i went to the pentagon. and it was shortly after having walked into the bowels of the pentagon after it had blown up with one of the urban search and rescue teams, i love the usar teams. they have these dogs, if you're a dog lover, these dogs are wonderful, aren't they? so we walked in to the hole in the pentagon and came back out, and i forget who it was, but somebody was there to greet me to let me know -- because they wanted to make sure i didn't know about it until after i'd been there and got things established -- that a good friend of mine and joe's had been on the american airlines flight that went into the pentagon. we'd had dinner with her about a week before the attacks. all of this stuff is very real to me. most of us will go through life, and we won't have the personal experience of losing relatives or friends or loved ones. most of us won't go through life unless we're in the military serving in iraq or afghanistan

or having served in vietnam somewhere, we won't go through life being exposed to the kind of death and destruction that can occur either by mother nature or by mankind. and one of the things that i have learned through my experiences of the murrah building and 9/11 and all the disasters that we handled during fema is that there is this deadly indifference in this country, this indifference that says that we are superior to mother nature, and we are superior to terrorism, and we are superior to everything. and so we don't have to worry about that. as we all sit here in a very comfortable room, relatively speaking, it's humid. not like denver. we're all sitting here again with these comforts. you're all going to go home. you're going to go home or go back to your offices, you're going to turn on the television, you're going to maybe pop some popcorn in the microwave as you watch a movie or fire up the computer, get on and do your writing or whatever you're going to be doing, and we take all of

that for granted. i want you to go through a little mental exercise for a second. i want you to think of where you are right now and draw a straight line to where you're going from here, home, wherever that home is. do you have that in your mind? now i want you to imagine from this point to wherever that point is everything two miles wide, one mile to the left, one mile to the right as you're going down that road visually, everything gone. everything. i don't mean you see rubble, i mean, it's all gone. it's been pushed back by a bull doars. this is what colin powell and i looked at when we went to the tsunami in 2004 and '5 in thailand and other places. and i remember as we had the tiger balm in our nose, and we're flying through looking at all of the destruction, i remember at one point looking down and seeing this one elderly woman desperately just walking along -- i'm sure she was in shock -- digging through the

rubble. i have no idea what she was looking for; home, loved ones, a mow men toe or something. her world was completely destroyed and can turned upside down. .. that is not bad day. think about august, september

and december. your apartment for your home, your office or wherever it is. no power for six weeks. you are going to be nuts. you will be irritable. it will be a pain in the rear. start shooting or whatever. there is a very thin line between this technologically savvy society we have today and mother nature or man either purposely or accidentally creating a crisis where everything is taken away and is gone. i am afraid most of us are deadly indifferent to it. we don't like to think about it. my time in d.c. has made me a pervert in that respect. when i travel i think about how do i get back home if something happens? i think about when we were in wholefoods the other day, wonderful vegetables and fruits

and everything else. people are looking at this particular red pepper is just not perfect. they are digging through to find the perfect red pepper. what i am thinking, what do they do when the you know what hits the fan, they're looking for a red pepper. i don't care how lousy it is. i want a red pepper. we are fighting for the last red pepper. as a look across the room icy the cartoon balloons over your heads. some of you are thinking it can't happen. this guy is nuts. just in time delivery. trucks can't get wholefoods. they can't get there. the bridges are out and the roads are gone. it is okay for a day or two. we have enough in the refrigerator. we will survive. give it a week. give it six weeks or longer

depending on the incident. how many of you are ready for that? it will never happen. i can get along for three or days. ask the folks in florida or gulf port or biloxi with the people outside san diego where the fire wiped out their homes. ask the people at ground zero. i don't want you all to become a citgo like me and think about it all of time but my challenge to you is this. think about the risk wherever you live or wherever you work and how prepared are you to deal with that risk? in washington the first thought is the biggest risk is terrorism. how many of you were here on

9/11? i wasn't. i heard stories about people trying to get from this area just to get across the bridges. people trying to get -- taking ten hours to get from this general area. it didn't have to be 9/11. it could be a dirty bomb. he takes out a substation -- if it happens to be just the right substation like we had in 2003 or 2004, it was a squirrel or something. took it out. that is all it has to be. everybody thinks that fema which runs no planes. restraints or automobiles will be there. there are three hundred million people in this country and there's a finite number of firefighters and team members

and a finite number of medical assistance teams, finite number of cops, finite number of health-care workers. of finite number of electrical crews to prepare power lines. they can't be everywhere at one time. even if they get to your neighborhood first you might be the guy at the end of the block. it might be five days. my challenge is twofold. what is to use hurricane katrina as an example of everything that can go wrong. this is -- many things -- no disasters perfect. that is why it is called a disaster. it went relatively well. katrina was one of those incidents where everything that could go wrong went wrong. mistakes all levels of government. mistakes in the population. mistakes that all came together.

the lesson from "deadly indifference" is for political leaders, policymakers and others to understand some of the rules and regulations that we have create this in difference. the lesson to be learned from the media and for us to learn how to deal with it. the second point is more important which is for us as individuals to understand katrina is not a one time incident. we had started to do the planning for ten catastrophic events we thought we should be ready for. we never got to practice or plan for the other nine. the challenge is for all of you to read this and get beyond all of the myths, all of the danger and misunderstandings of hurricane katrina and understand what it is to live in our

society and our responsibility as citizens in this country. they give for coming out. i will shut up and answer questions from you. thank you for being here. [applause] >> questions? >> i have an anecdote. ahead to laugh because i did a little roast on his 50th birth day and he didn't like it so he called me a blond not job. >> google my name and see what you come up with. come on. i have been grilled by the united states congress and the united states senate. i think there are people smarter

than that. fire away. >> latter-day saints and community, what is the role of church groups coming in to help in disasters? how do they set goes up and who goes and how do they help? >> most people in this room know how i feel about the non-government organizations. they are the most effective and the most rapid responders you have. you know why? they are not burdened by rules and regulations. they are able to go where they want to go. as long as they get within the perimeter they can do whatever they want to do. the most effective at taking care of people that they should be an example for. my theory is this. we have all these rules and regulations. so that we can have accountability. i think it is just the opposite. we have the rules and

regulations so we can avoid accountability. we have them so the easiest answer to give is high can't do that because it is against the rules. i would like to do that for you but it is against the rules. that is no accountability. as opposed to -- i am not sure congress would ever do this but give the fema director and people in the midst of a crisis the kind of flexibility that they need. to give them the flexibility they need in a crisis to do what needs to be done so they can take care of victims and make things work. why do i think that won't work? i wish they would do it? because congress is best at second-guessing. it would be i can guarantee that if they did give that discretion and flexibility to people in the field they would -- i can see the hearing now. i got grilled by this one time. i forget which committee was but

four hurricanes hit florida. hurricane gene was coming. we didn't know whether it was going to hit miami dade or west palm beach. i made the decision. the best thing to do is declare a disaster area. we should approve the governor's request and improve miami dade county and west palm beach to get everything covered so we don't wait around and make things happen. fema went into action and provided assistance to people in miami dade country and all hell broke loose. brown was trying to buy votes. seriously do you think i could never get some of those people in those precincts or those areas to vote for george w. bush? no way they would do that no matter how much money you throughout. that is not what we doing. we were trying to be proactive and make certain wherever that cone of probably wherever it hit

that we would do what we needed to do. we immediately got second guest. even though i think we should have that flexibility is a double-edged sword and i'm not sure any future under any secretary will reveal that. because congress cannot help themselves. >> change in policy, you believe change in missouri and other natural disasters still occurring, are we better prepared than we were for katrina? >> i don't think so. the reason i don't think so is twofold. there was a stereotypical reaction to katrina. we will never let this happen again. politicians have since learned what you do is throw everything including the kitchen sink at a

disaster instead of being specific and targeted and good stewards of taxpayers' money. now for a everything added. that is the normal reaction. we are also facing a budget crisis where every $0.40 of every dollar we spend in this market, there are -- i will find a citation but there was a 2008 article in the homeland security journal about all of the equipment we have given firefighters across the country to be prepared for a bio attack or nuclear attack. from reading this journal in 2008, that equipment has deteriorated to the point it is unusable. i see some head shaking. we are not ready. after every disaster the typical bell curve. disaster occurs. politicians go into action. everybody does their stuff.

the media goes away. we're back to complacency. we are silly if we don't think al qaeda or other radical islamists, they don't like the fact we are in a room like this. a room full of republicans. you are supposed to laugh at that. you two did. thanks a lot. we have men and women and conservatives and liberals and democrats and republicans, a mixture of people in this room. that is not what these -- they don't like our way of life. we become complacent about it. mother nature will do what she wants to do. when we do the catastrophic disaster planning geologists tell us off of the organ washington coast is the likelihood of another tsunami and we are at the end of the 3,000 year period where those occur. the end of of 3,000 year period. i don't know if that means five hours or five years or 50 years

or 500 years but we are somewhere in that timeframe. there will be a tsunami at some time. maybe not in our lifetimes of washington oregon coast. imagine. take that line in your mind from your home or office and imagine it going through seattle to portland. you think we are ready for that? we are not ready for it. more importantly i don't think citizens are ready. if all of you were to leave today my hope would be if something bad happened in your neighborhood or your business or what ever that you wouldn't be shellshocked. that you wouldn't stand around with a dumb look on your face, how did that happen? that you would have been cognizant of the fact that something could have happened that you had done some minimal preparation. if you were to do that you are better off than 90% of the people in this country. most of the people in this country will wait for someone to come and rescue them. for someone to take care of

them. it is a huge mistake. it will not, cannot occur. i don't think we're better off. >> what about the performance with the tornado? >> i love craig. for those who don't know craig he is the current director of fema. i have known him since he was emergency manager in florida. he is doing something that i think is gutsy on his part and i hope he continues to push. that is the attitude that he is using 70 to our maturation done this saying you need to be ready to be on your own for 72 hours. that has two effects. it starts to lower expectations. we have gone to the point that people -- how many planes do you think she moans? how many fire trucks and

ambulances? we of one ambulance. you might have a fire truck. otherwise we don't. we don't own anything. the only thing fema has is a check book and the power of the presidency with a declaration is declared. the ability to coordinate the federal government responds. beyond that fema doesn't do squad. fema does not rescue people. people find that. get it out of your head. when they dial 911 it goes to local fire or police station. if it is a really big crisis i guarantee you that local fire station and police department will be overwhelmed within 12 hours. mutual aid kick in and -- i want you to remember this. three hundred million people. who will come to save you? you have to be your own personal

firefighter and search and rescue team member. you are on your own. lower expectations and at the same time the inverse effect is make people realize you have a personal responsibility and that responsibility is not just to your family and neighbors but also to those firefighters that will eventually show up. you are not ready. if you haven't done what you need to do to take care of yourself and that firefighter gets hurt or killed taking care of you then shame on you. >> how many employees does fema have? is a all-around country or just here? >> 4,000 is the current number. 3500 or so when i was there. it is down to 4,000. four thousand full time and the cadres of disaster assistance or

whatever they call it that come in and do stuff. remember those people are not firefighters. they are not rescue workers. they are not people who come in with all of this equipment to come in and rescue you from the burning building or flooded house. they administer programs and get checked out to make sure people coordinate among the states and communities. they're doing those sorts of things and implementing programs and doing planning and exercises all the time. there are offices -- see how quickly i forget? and ten regions and they are spread out all over the country. it was at one time -- when i was there the operating budget was -- let me give you these figures. i know this has changed.

when i was there the operating budget was $3 billion. a lot of money. the operating budget of dhs was $48 billion. that is the fifth of the department of homeland security. it is a miniscule federal agency. very effective but a minuscule federal agency. in this town, many and employees of the currency of this town. the problem in this town is -- i shouldn't say always. fema became relegated to the backwaters of the bureaucracy and became relegated to the monolith -- how liberating when you say the government doesn't care what people think.

it became relegated to the monolith of the department of homeland security. imagine being in dhs arguing over $3.5 billion for operating and you bank half a billion dollars versus everybody else arguing over tens of billions of dollars. it is a fact of life and why my argument is fema should not have been part of dhs. that is an argument i will bet my head and nobody listens. next question. >> you are not in the federal government. how do you have societies change its thought about what fema has done? seems like every time something happens in this country, a huge disaster, fear not -- we call fema and can't get anyone to

come and help. how do we as a society change that? people out in the country realize they're not the local fire department for ambulance service? >> you have to want to change. every disaster affect at least one united states congressman, two u.s. senators. what is their motivation to change? that perspective or that image when it gives them an incredible photo opportunity to stand and hand out money to a school or hospital? there is no incentive whatsoever for them to change. so instead what you have to do is -- which is very difficult -- don't have to take an experience like hurricane katrina but all the respect of the people in the superdome. i understand they were hot and miserable and i understand they

want to water and they wanted food. it was not the greatest meal in the world but it was sustenance and they were safe. a camera lens focus is about this wide. all you hear is somebody is hot and miserable. that gets extrapolated after the entire country -- why aren't they? nobody asked should they be there? if they should be there what are those people doing their and the questions should be in the community that you live what are you doing to get them out of their in the first place? it is the willingness to have the discussion that i hope this book generates about what is the role of government and individuals when it comes to a crisis.

kindest and people in the superdome miserable. i get that. i want to carry it -- compare them to a woman in bangladesh. she had nothing. there was no government to give her water. there was no disaster medical assistance team to help her but for the americans that showed up. our expectations are way overblown in this country. we have no understanding of risk or probabilities. we don't get that. we go out and buy a lottery ticket when it is $50 million--fifty million to one that you're going to win it is more realistic that you will not be able to get there tomorrow. until we do that by being willing to stand up and tell the

truth about what occurred in a major disaster like this, what happened, i am not bound by political correctness or being in the administration. i understand you are miserable in the superdome. you are alive and there is water and health care coming and there is the military coming to get you out. it may not be as fast as you like. may not be as fast as you like but it is coming. a tough thing to say. >> part of what happened was not just a crisis in actuality but no one got ahead of it. >> no one got ahead of it. a great example a given the book is anderson cooper. i don't anderson -- anderson talked to somebody. he definitely wanted to get in one of the urban search and rescue teams boats to see being

-- people be rescued from their roofs. staff answered the question. you won't do that. you won't put cooper in a vote -- in a boat to see a rescue. the boat holds six people and you have four rescue people and anderson and a camera man. a my supposed to put them on the roof and take these four people off the roof and take them back and come back and get anderson? no. what i didn't do was say anderson cannot get in the boat. we will find another boat. we will tie anderson to that rescue boat so that he is not taking the space and then he can watch. in stead i said no and that was it. anderson did what any good journalist will do. he got his own boat, went out and he didn't go with the rescue team. he went out ahead of us. now people on the roof, there is nobody here. nobody is here to save these people.

let me save you. sounds like geraldo. what anderson didn't realize was he got ahead of the grooves. that boat was just one house back. that is not what gets portrayed when you don't stay ahead of the media. the other thing we did that we didn't do a good job is embedded reporter with us. bought the block. jenna lee reporter for the wall street journal was probably one of the more objective reporters in terms of katrina and the cost. probably a couple of days. he spent a lot of time with me in indiana and illinois and other places learning and understanding of our it worked. we should do more of that. the media ought to recognize. i get it. if you get that one person in

that camera, the screaming and yelling about something, that is what you will talk about. i get it. what you ought to do is consumers of the news, those of you not in the media, when that camera is focused, there's a story behind the camera man and behind the person you are interviewing and a story on both sides. there are perspective you are not getting so people in this room are smarter than the average population. you should not just be these willy-nilly consumers of news. you need to be more discerning consumers of news and realize anderson is doing a picture and doing a story of someone being taken off a roof. if he is screaming why isn't somebody there don't take at face value. ask yourself is there somebody there or where are they?

>> you were saying the new director of fema is lowering expectations and that is a good thing. maybe instilling realistic expectations. lowering them may sound like putting standards somewhere but if you can't achieve that standard -- >> that is a good point. is realistic expectations. it is getting the expectations down to a realistic level. that is -- this is the amazing thing to me. the louisiana department and urban search and rescue teams and individuals with boats leave for the coast guard rescuing more people than triageing taking them from the rooftops to dry ground, to be as effective as possible, what is the result of that?

somebody on one of the overpasses dies and i get sued. i get sued personally in louisiana because we had been grossly negligent by triageing. seriously? by saving people and putting them on dry land and getting them to huey long airport to start caring for them because someone dies in that process we were grossly negligent? that is where we have expectations that are way out of line. we just have to realize you can't save everybody. >> your next book should be the ten disaster that were not planned out. hurricane and flooding. and writing a book for a person interested in making sure they are not reliant on fee mode or the government to help in a crisis situation. i live in california for a long time and keep food in my garage.

because my mother-in-law says when there's an earthquake you need some five gallon containers of water and food for three or four days and a first-aid kit. my mom lynn is in new orleans and her hurricane plan was a cooler in the attic with important documents and lock bags. they need those important documents. a pickax so that when they are in their attic because their home is in the water that they can access their way to the roof. to be rescued. that was her perfect plan. >> does she live on the roof? >> she did not get flooded. she got out of town. it was mayhem. it was horrible. every day she didn't know if she had a house to come back to or

not. >> did she get the information -- >> people would read it and think we had a snowstorm that pretty much snow people in for the better part of a week the last year and a snowstorm where people couldn't get home and they ran out of gas. there was potential for letting people know, stay in your office. you are safe there. don't leave a place that is safe. >> one thing we did post 9/11 we were talking about in the introduction was a smallpox attack. the thought was we are in really good shape because everybody will go out to richmond or baltimore or somewhere else. i sat in that meeting scratching

my head thinking okay, sino now we are going to send all those people to those places and what will happen to the infrastructure and everything there? those people in centerville and richmond will go further pushing everything as far as we can. we never thought about beyond richmond or somebody going to pittsburgh. we didn't think about that. the same is true here. there's this idea that is valid in one sense that if we figure out how to take care of ourselves where we are, a dirty bomb hits d.c. the wrong time of year, i might stay where are you still live in alexandria. the safest place even though it is within eight miles of the national mall. a dirty bomb doesn't mean anything if it blows in the opposite direction. it gets to the idea of

understanding the risk. understand the risk of where you live and do the basics of being prepared. >> notwithstanding -- you actually break down the cobweb at the individual level, consider the governor the dogcatcher. for the first time no one really understand that. the level of bureaucracy exists that we have to deal with and in a crisis situation, you spend a lot of time breaking it down. first time i ever read anybody putting it down on paper. >> either on my talk show or in lectures around world people don't understand unless you work

in washington they don't really understand the convoluted system we have which is a great system, but federalism basically precludes us from -- the federal government from walking in and saying hi, governor, here's what we are going to do. the governor is the one in charge. i was there finding out what the governor needed to try to help the governor. that is why -- one of the stories in my book was being on air force 1 trying to convince -- we did convince the president to federalize all of these in louisiana. we would invoke the insurrection act and take over law enforcement and everything. my argument for doing it was because of these bureaucracies we can't make things happen. we can't get through the dysfunction in the federal government little on the state

and local level. the president agreed to do that making the most amazing decisions to allow 24 hours to think about it. she figured out what it meant politically and said no. not going to happen. the governor figured out a way to work through that bureaucracy. something i never pushed. >> hi have covered various disasters. you are not the first fema director -- a month ago there was the -- be prepared. talking about a book but isn't there -- isn't ready.gov supposed to do that for us? why does this message not get

moved to people? >> ready.gov may be great but it is the government. there is a natural inclination from the government. i do it. i heard a ready.gov commercial -- couldn't tell you what it set. we become very cynical about the government telling us what to do and rightfully so. there is another more important thing. it is difficult if not impossible to think about this. it goes back once again to even those who are the poorest among us are better off than 90% of the rest of the world. because of that we are very complacent and comfortable with the way we live and how we live

and we have a belief that we are americans and nothing bad can happen to us. is not true. i don't know how to get that across other than continuing to stand out and lecture and i will continue to do that. i spoke to a group of ceos a couple years ago. during the q&a it came up how ready they were in the continuity of operations. how could they continue to get back in business as quickly as possible? one ceo's attitude i have the most loyal group of people, will put them up against anybody else in the groom. or do you know that? because when something bad happens we have all these plans and we can do this or get into the office and some people can

work remotely. i am thinking oh man. you get paid a billion dollars a year and don't have a clue. they could be the most loyal people in the world. they would walk across fire for you. but if they can't get to the office or they fire up the computer and it doesn't do anything or there's no connection to the internet or no way to connect wirelessly or their home has been destroyed, what are they going to care about? taking care of their home and family or the ceo i am loyal to? that is a difficult thing for a ceo to think about. is not a priority for a ceo. he is worried about next quarter. until the proverbial you know what hits the fan and they have a horrible quarter because no one -- there's a balance.

the balance is weekend be more prepared but no matter how prepared we are, something bad can and may happen to us. nobody likes to think about that. >> part of the problem is expectations are blown out of proportion as to what fema can or cannot do. talking a lot about changing people's expectations, what fema is capable of doing is he enough and if not how would you like to see that change? >> i don't think fema's mission ought to be expanded. the natural tendency in this country, you can pick any

agency, about how they're going to expand their programs to these checkpoints. it is insanity. if fema were to increase its capacity to do response or start rescuing more people that will cause people to be more complacent and dependent on the government. wherever she might is right now it ought to stop. and have any additional capacity others and to stay where it is and not create -- that will be difficult to do because they continue to expand and grow and try to become more pervasive. that is the wrong way to go. it is the nature of government. >> if something happens along the san andreas fault would it be the federal government that helps california or have them do that rather than the federal

government trying to grow and assume more responsibility? at the state level have them prepared for something serious? >> that is the way it should be. let's say it is. california even though they're broke has done a very good job preparing for the big one hitting the sand areas fold. having said that, think about how the population along the fault line has increased. if that bid one occurs now bearing our lifetime no matter how well prepared california is, they will not be able to respond effectively without the help of other states and the federal government. there just are not enough assets in california alone to rescued the number of people who will be separated from the rest of the state between the fault and the pacific ocean that will be without power and food and

water, transportation and communication. at that point you have to have the other states chip in and more likely the federal government chipped in in terms of military actions to do these. military assets? that is another problem. how many military assets would there be available right now if the big one occurred right now? we need 50 blackhawks and 27 cit looks -- chinooks. what will secretary gates do? probably say let me go to my bean counter. not how do i pay for this but how many do we have? where are they? it is realizing where we are in this moment in time what kind of assets we have to respond.

it doesn't exist. >> the difference between scope and scale versus what goes on every day versus catastrophic events. >> the point is the big one in california, the scope of that is going to be tremendous. there will be -- to give it some perspective we were worried about housing 100,000 people. imagine in california, how do you house ten million? where do you put them? i have a brilliant idea. ten million fema drivers. would that be great? where are we going to house them?

tent cities. brilliant idea. or cruise ships. i will bring cruise ships in. we will put people on cruise ships. you cannot scale up. the bigger the catastrophic event that occurs the more difficult you have scaling up to that event. i don't want to get too intellectual in terms of the discussion but we know the likelihood of a catastrophic event in california because the san andreas fault isn't 100%. is going to happen. we don't know when. what is the likelihood of an electromagnetic pulse? you know what that is? blowup and atomic bomb in the atmosphere and wipe out all the electronic circuits. i don't want to put a second book during my discussion but it

is called one second after is the title. it describes the breakdown of society. the likelihood of such an event occurring is not necessarily great right now. is not likely to occur. but the scope of that would be absolutely beyond anything the united states could do. the scale and scope, that is why wherever you live you have to evaluate the risks. the risk of a blackout occurring almost anywhere in this country is pretty realistic. a squirrel legally drunk, al qaeda or has the law. they may eventually figure out you want to bring the country to its knees have a coordinated assault on substations and take the grid down. or better yet this is a brilliant. do a cyberattack.

how many of you could go three or four days without your debit card? i know some people who can't live without their credit card. scope and scale. these are good questions. our the intern's doing? they doing all right? >> the last six years in your experience and credentials utah kilobit about what competencies are needed. you don't have the kind of experience -- everyone of those leaders are from a different place. how did you leverage your life experience to do that job? >> let me ask you.

good answer. the most important thing for president to look at unless you are head of the nuclear regulatory commission or missile defense agency is to be able to do two things. in still within the people the belief that you will take them to a level of excellence that they can achieve what they want to achieve in their particular area. you have to have a sense of organizational management and understand the interplay between the political leadership and civil service leadership and understand all those things. it is about managing an organization. it is not about these specific technicalities of understanding x, y and z. beyond that i was more fortunate than any fema director in the

history of the agency. i came in at the bottom. i had to learn all the rules and regulations of every department and every part of the organization worked. their responsibilities and how they worked and everything. it was the best experience and better than any other fema director. you can't -- if you cannot manage the bureaucracy you cannot manage the organization. i don't care how tactically smart you are, you will fail. it is about understanding those people who work here day in and day out -- sometimes they have tunnel vision. you have to get people to look outside their comfort zone which can be very difficult. that is about trying to lead

people. based on the people in this room who have continued to communicate since i left the organization, i was -- [inaudible] >> so different in response. >> on the job training and recognizing if i need a brain surgeon to fill that job, to have that expertise i needed nuclear physicist to do this job, having the sense to know you need the experts in this field around you so that when you need a nuclear physicist you get things done. absolutely. every disaster is different. every disaster -- i sound like a lawyer. every disaster is truly different. in the sense that you have different nuances and different things but every disaster is exactly the same. by that i mean you take 9/11.

what irritates me about 9/11 is the dichotomy between terrorism and natural disaster. what would fema and the federal government have done differently on 9/11 if there had just been a failure of the air-traffic control system and that is why the planes went in to the towers? what would our response have been? what would the fema responds have been on that day? nothing. it would have been exactly the same. until we get through our head that disaster, every one is unique but all basically the same. you recover. >> you were at fema five years with two years as a director and no one knew you were. you must have been doing a good job. >> just trying to get stuff

done. >> are there any other countries that do a better job? for example israel? on a daily basis their population has more training in the military. every house has a bunker. in england many disasters, they are prepared little more. >> in countries all over the world we can emulate and learn from. one of the persistent problems in this country is the unwillingness to recognize some place else -- something you can learn from another country. i am not sure we can emulate or adopt what another country does. we will never be able to adopt the israeli strategy, we will

never get that. i hope we don't have a reason to get that mindset in this country. you raise a good point. i pointed this out the other day. we need to grow the government so they can respond better and get more. on the ground. i immediately spent a significant amount of time in russia. dictatorial, autocratic government. they do some good stuff. they're very good at some things but you would think -- i don't want to use the word communist. even in that authority of communist like system they can't do it. they cannot rescue everybody in moscow. when the berlin attack occurred

they were calling us for advice of what to do. the theatre. there are things that we can learn. there is an inherent unwillingness to look beyond our shore for things we can do differently. >> what is the future of public service. you have political views about government's role and right now we're hearing a lot about anti bureaucratic talk. what do you think the future is? what is the role of government and public service in meeting these vital needs and is this criticism warranted about the government overreaching and taking on the private sector personal responsibilities? >> closer to those who are most

effective. devolving the policy and the response down there is what i would rather see. fema has a great role in terms of training and exercises and helping develop policies and structures and weighs state and local governments respond. i want to separate the concept of fema responding versus training and exercising and helping state and local government learn. fema has a great role in that respect. 5 started this discussion about some of the people in this room. there is a lot of expertise at the federal level that they don't reach out to. this is an editorial column. we have taken the concept of response and recovery, how we

deal with disasters, natural and man-made, and allow terrorism to permeate all of them. it has become a clash of cultures. a culture that says we have to stop terrorism at all costs, stop any act of terrorism. you are going to fail. you cannot. even if you have a police state you cannot stop acts of terrorism. ask the chinese or the malaysians. ask anybody. you cannot stop it. we have to get over this idea going back to different kinds of disasters that regardless of the type of disaster, helping state and local governments become more effective in how they respond, that is the role the government must take.

developing some sort of continuity of best practices around the country. helping state and locals. for example -- i don't know if this analogy will work or lead to too many problems but i will try. the department of education is a total waste of money. we are sending all this money into d.c.. it does back after the state's. that dollar that i send to washington d.c. as part of education gets back to denver is about $0.30. it is not very effective. instead of helping state and local they are doing mandate. what if we had the money that comes into fema and that money is taken because we have a group of experts in a minimal agency able to go out to all the

localities and figure out ways -- can't believe we will say this ten years after 9/11 -- how to better communicate. how do we figure out protocol and equipment for communications? how do we figure out better ways -- i don't care what any administration says, we still don't have it. how do we figure out a better way to encourage and recognize if you get local fire departments to recognize it is in their best interest that in colorado springs why should the city and county of denver have the best of every piece of equipment they have? why not spread that around in lakewood and colorado springs and cities on the front range come together as a unit and make sure they have the kind of capability through equipment training and everything else to

respond? there's only one organization that contrive that and that is fema. if we get into a culture of doing that it will change people's perception of what fema does. fema does not show up and save your but. your local fire department does it. anything else? [applause] >> thank you. >> i will present the national press club card. [laughter] >> this will get you through. . we enjoyed having you. thank you so much. it was a wonderful presentation.