screeria -- nigeria. -

a look at two agency budget requests, first fee ma's budget then a hearing on the department of transportation's 2016 budget. and later border patrol officials discuss threats and security along the u.s./canadian border. next fema administrator craig

fugate renting his agency's 2016 budget proposal to a senate appropriations budget committee. it is for disaster radio preparedness and resiliency. from capitol hill. this is about an hour and a half. i call this hearing to order for the dhs appropriations subcommittee. today will be -- i'd like to welcome administrator fugate, administrator of fee ma. i appreciate very much you being here, also senator shaheen appreciate you being here as well. we're here to discuss the fiscal 2016 budget for your

agency. before we get into the substance of your budget i'd like to take a moment and thank you for sending roy wright to fargo several weeks ago. it was very helpful and actually will pertain -- or his visit there pertains to one of the subjects that i will bring us later today, which is talking about how we coordinate flood mapping and flood insurance with communities efforts to build permanent flood protection. he did a very fine job, he was very helpful and i think that's something that can be helpful around the country. the focus for today's hearing is -- at least my focus will be on three areas, effective stewardship of the disaster relief fund fema's efforts to buy town risk before a disaster occurs and measuring preparedness levels of the nation after years of investment. dis ter relief fund

or drf is fema's biggest tool in aiding disaster victims, rebuilding our communities and ensuring resiliency in disasters. congress took a major step to stabilize the dlr. as a result fema must focus on ensuring the funds are managed and distributed in an effective and efficient manner to respond to, recover from and mitigate against disasters. congress took steps in 2013 to help reduce the overall cost of disasters. in the sandy recovery improvement act section 428 of that act provided for alternative procedures in certain projects to grant -- to allow grantees to receive full project funding up front on agreed to estimates. that option should reduce administrative costs, start recovery projects faster and likely reduce some of the

challenges currently being established with dee obligations of funds after projects are closed. unfortunately there seems to be some reluctance on the part of grantees who em bra is that program. i want to better understand what that reluctance is because i think this is an innovative idea to help projects move forward more ex pishsly. i mentioned dee obligations. because i know that this is a real concern to the states. where projects expenditures are questioned in an audit fema appropriately has the ability or authority to dee obligate funds, however, that authority has been exercised years in some cases after project approvals and often well after project completion in response to audits by the inspector general. we need to find a balance between any waste, fraud, or abuse findings and decisions made under the

pressure of responding to a disaster. so again i applaud you for fema's efforts to work with grantees through the new procurement disaster assistance teams. hope these teams will avoid grantees to avoid some of the common mistakes while managing the response to the disaster. but clearly there is a real concern on the part of states about the possibility of dee obligating funds i understand that having served as a governor ten years i know that senator shaheen understands it very well based on her tenure as a governor. with he do have to find ways to mitigate that concern, better address the challenge that it poses between states being able to go ahead and undertake these programs in a timely way with confidence that they're following the rules, but at the same time making sure we don't have waste fraud and abuse. we have to do both and it is a challenge.

also you and i have discussed and agreed administrator in the past that fema's hazard and pre mitigation disaster programs as well as risk map are critical to buying down damage that would otherwise be seen in future disasters, especially flooding. the key is that disaster mitigation focuses on the actual hazard and that the funding is effective in preventing or mitigating that type of disaster, whether it be flood fire or other natural disaster. the example that i've used in our discussions and that i've worked on with i think probably you and certainly members of your agency is where we have flooding and roads get washed out and fema provides funding to help replace those roads, and you can replace the road exactly like it was am in a sense, but if that is at a level where it continues to wash out and be

flooded, that doesn't make much sense because we just repeat the problem, we keep stepping in the same hole. so the ability to make sure that you replace the road in a way where you mitigate against some of those problems is cost effective for everybody concerned. you pay for it once instead of three, four, or five times and the locality is better served because they have a usable road. so i think this is an important area that we'll explore in addition in this hearing and i know you have some thoughts on that. with respect to preparedness effort, the administration has submitted its proposal to consolidate grants into the national preparedness grant program or the mpgp. while the authorizing committees should consider this proposal i view that fema could be doing more to assess the return on the

investment that the government has made in our nation's preparedness, what is the level of preparedness across the nation, how are training and exercise efforts integrated with these grants how can we better measure the effectiveness of grant programs in raising the preparedness level. so we want to talk about where with err in terms of preparedness as a nation, what your opinion is in that respect and what we're doing to continue to improve it. fiscal year 2016 request also includes funds to start 19 modernization for your grant systems. so the question here is will that modernization effort improve the ability of states to report preparedness levels. i think we talk about some cost savings, always a good thing, but also we want to talk about the effectiveness of the program. so i look forward to hearing from you on these and other priorities that you have for this year and with that i will turn to ranking member

senator shaheen for any opening comments that she may have. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome administrator fugate and your staff members who are here, we appreciate your coming this afternoon. as chairman hoeven says as a former governor i also recognize how critical fee ma's activities are when states have emergencies and even more personally having been in a tornado at one point in my past i've very personally benefited from the efforts that feem had a has made to help people who are victims of disasters. so i appreciate that your work is critical and understand that currently all 50 states, including new hampshire and some tribal areas have an active disaster with fema and understand that the costs to rebuild are growing. in the 1990s fema was appropriate created an average of $3 billion

a year for disaster costs and yet one decade later average costs have trild to over $9.5 billion a year. disaster types are also more varied and complex. in the last five years along with the anticipated floods tornadoes, wildfires, hurricanes, the nation has had an earthquake on the east coast a super storm sandy in the northeast, landslides in the west, a bombing at the boston marathon, active shooters in public places and unprecedented snow in the northeast. and further impacts from a cyberattack are constantly materializing. so it has been a very busy time at fema. now, because these events have become more common and more intense, this makes our mitigation efforts increasingly critical. we can't continue just to make investments and rebuilding after an event occurs we must pay

equal attention to preventing damage from occurring in the first place and these efforts are not only critically important to vulnerable communities, but also to the federal budget. i was pleased to see the administration's request for a significant increase in mitigation efforts to better prepare for and reduce the impacts of flooding and other types of natural disasters. for every dollar we invest in these activities we save up to $4 in rebuildings costs and that is, in fact, a smart investment. each state, territory major urban area and several tribes have ongoing preparedness projects with the agency as well. these activities have an immediate and real impact on citizens, on businesses and on our first responders. administrator fugate i look forward to working with you to ensure fema's support role is delivered in a user friendly way both from your headquarters and regional offices. so, again

thank you for being here today and i look forward to your testimony. thank you mr. chairman. >> thank you, senator she hand. i'd also offer an opportunity for senator baldwin, any opening statement you might have. >> thank you, mr. chairman and ranking member. i don't want to give an extensive opening statement, but i will, like you mr. chairman preview the focus of my questions following your testimony will be the issue of rail safety and the prospect for a derailment or explosion as we see a lot of train traffic through our state and particularly from the chairman's region of the world. i thank you for being here and look forward to asking you questions following your testimony. >> with that administrator fugate, we turn to you for your opening statement.

>> well, senators, mr. chairman thank you. the first thing i wanted to talk about is i wanted to thank you and your staffs for something that isn't always seen as something that's glamorous, but it's a key part of the constitutional separation of powers and that is the budgeting process. the fact that the administration comes forward with recommendations but ultimately congress must determine where we apply our taxpayers' dollars is a deliberative process that we participate this. it's not easy, our staff spent a lot of time over it, we're not going to agree on everything but it is the difference between having continuing resolutions an uncertainty and knowing what the intent of congress was with a budget that makes a difference in our ability to execute the mission. it isn't always going to be the highest priorities that some people think we should be working on, but i understand the hard work you put in the staff put in to get to those numbers, to get to the budgets to ensure that we have the resources to do our jobs. if you have determined against all the priorities of government. so first of all, i understand our role here is to present our

budget, but i also understand it's the role of you to make those decisions to figure out how we're going to fund all of government and we're part of that discussion. so we just appreciate that. the second thing i want to talk about is and i want to save more time for your questions because i think there's a lot of things we want to talk about, but when i got to fema it was a real challenge for me to be able to talk to you and tell you about what we were doing. i could more easily tell you how much money we had spent, but i couldn't tell you what that had actually accomplished. even within the programs i found that we were oftentimes doing things because we had been doing them without really understanding, well, is there another way to look at this. and i told the staff when i got here, and i had come from the state of florida i said the majority of your budget this is the last one that's going to go up. we knew what was happening across the country, knew that the economy was in trouble and the years of budgets incrementally going up each year and you were able to basically achieve your mission because you

were going to get a little bit more each year was over. it didn't mean that you didn't have needs, but you did have to look at your budget differently because if you were going to find or free up money for the things you thought you needed to do they were going to come from the things that you had been doing that either you were going to do differently or find different ways to accomplish that. to a certain degree we were doing that well before sequestration came in. even with that we had focused on the mission and not used that as an excuse, but rather look at how do we get more efficiencies in savings. but we also needed to colace around a lot of different moving pieces in fema and tell people this is what we have to be focused on. first thing, you have to build for the catastrophic disaster. if you don't your risk is we will have the next katrina because systems do not scale up. if you're not building for the big event and you don't understand that's why you're putting your teams together building your programs if you only build to

what you're capable of doing that larger disaster will be a failure. that doesn't mean you have to ask for more money but you have to look at your systems designed around the catastrophic disaster response. second thing is you have to build your programs around the people you serve and as senator hoeven points out when that's not the case we see the mismatch between trying to serve our communities and how they need the programs to work for them versus what may be easy for us to administer. so oftentimes we found we had defaulted to those that are easy to administer we weren't really focused as much on the people we're serving and that mismatch oftentimes has played out in survivors, communities, not getting the full support they should have gotten in a disaster. you have to go to where disasters are. i tell people just because it works at 500 c street doesn't mean it's going to work out in a train derailment in the middle of nowhere with poor communications. you have to build the systems that go to where the survivor and dis ter

is, no the what works in washington, d.c. you have to buy down your future risk. we have to do a better job of understanding that we can no longer subsidize risk and come back to the first dollar every time there's a disaster if local governments and states are not to go their part to reduce future risk. we just can't keep dealing with every disaster and building it back as senator hoeven says the way it was only to rebuild it time and time again. we have to do that differently. so we have to look at risk reduction. and then the last thing, we oftentimes at feem had a and as your committee staff will tell you have not been good stewards of the basic functions of our programs, whether it's it personnel, a lot of the things that may not be things people want to talk about in disaster, but if you don't have the foundational systems of your management working right you're not going to build that catastrophic disaster response team t it goes from how you hire people to how you mr. your systems, how you set up your architecture for it. so we look at these five areas and draw all of our programs through that lens of are we as a

nation building the cape ability to respond to catastrophic disasters, not just what fema does but through all those grant dollars that have funded local and state capabilities. are we building the capability to respond as a nation to catastrophic disasters. so that, mr. chairman available to respond to your questions. >> thank you administrator, for being here today. we'll begin the questions, we'll start with rounds of five minutes. and i want to go right to the concern that is come up in regard to sur lane sandy and claims for homeowners who have not received the proper resolution on their claims. that they have had issues with the insurance company and it appears particularly with engineering companies that have worked on adjusting their claims and as it turns out these claims were not adjusted properly and it appears

that homeowners were short changed on the recovery that they're entitled to. my understanding is there is out of 144 claims, 144,000 excuse me claims that were made, that there's on the order of 2,200 cases where the engineering report may have been fraudulent improper where the insurance company didn't provide the proper reimbursement to the homeowner. this is obviously a very serious concern and that we need to make sure we understand exactly what happened and hold those responsible accountable and correct it. i also had am aware that mr. roth, the dhs inspector general is conducting a full investigation and we look forward to his report, but i'd like you to respond as to

exactly what are the actions that you're taking and what is the current status of this matter? >> well, the actual cases you mention, i believe, those are the cases that are actually being litigated. we're concerned that there may be people who did not choose to litigate that may also have had questionable engineering reports. so very simply we're approaching this from if they are owed more money we pay. if it's fraud, we refer that to the ig of justice. if we're finding litigation costs are going to exceed what the claims were we're willing to settle. so those are the cases that are in litigation we're working towards settlement there are additional hearings taking place as we move towards that, but we are prepared to reopen the other cases where there may have been engineering firms or concerns of allegation that involved these firms as to how accurate the findings were in determining what the damages were. so we're in the process to begin in this next month opening up claims process to the people

that had policies, sir. if they got the full amount of the $250,000 they've gotten what their insurance will pay, but those that did not receive that that still had concerns we're going to open up a process to begin looking at those with the same scrutiny we have been looking at those that have been in litigation. this goes back to being survivor centric. i think we found that through our right your wrongs and through our own program that we mutt more emphasis on ensuring the solvency of the nfip funds without making sure we were putting as much emphasis on servicing those claims. there should have been no reason why if it was eligible they weren't paid. we were looking at what was the cyst am mic root cause. we think it comes back to there was more emphasis on not making overpayments because the insurance companies would have to get that money back and reimburse fema and that seemed to drive more of this than

making sure there was equal weight given to paying full yie what the policy should have paid. so as we get through that we'll provide more swrup dates. we're currently focused right now on resolving the current litigation, going back to the people that filed claims and then going back to those systemic issues as both the ig is looking at it as well as attorney generals in both the states of new jersey and in new york to look at fundamental issues as well as any impropriety that was taking place. we will address the impropriety on the front end, but we're also looking at the structural issues that got us there and going we want to build this program back. there is equal weight to ensuring giving full payment on claims without the overbearing penalty of having to pay money back driving decision-making. >> so my understanding is there are 144,000 cases or claims that included engineering services. so you're saying that for those

144,000 cases you've set up a process whereby they can in essence apply for any -- to address any shortfall that they may have suffered and get the reimbursement that they're entitled to? >> yes, sir. we brought in people from across fema and detailed them into the flood insurance program to set this up, we will be announcing it coming live this next month. we're going to traj and start with those that were involved with firms that we saw concerns with and then we will be opening it up to anybody else. again, if there was any concerns or questions about their claims process, we're not going to predetermine that until they call us and we start working that and see what we find. >> you will start that process when? >> our goal is to start it next month. >> okay. and you've already taken steps to address the administrator who was overseeing the program i understand and that's correct. and are there being fob further

chajs in personnel or are you awaiting the inspector general's report at this point? >> right now we've -- we've had some staff changes i brought in an experienced senior executive service to take over and lead the program. we have detail people into the program to provide the initial surge help and we will be evaluating that with the assistance of the ig and others what additional steps may be needed if we find things that suggest there was any impropriety among our staff. >> okay. thank you. >> administrator fugate, senator hoeven has asked a number of my questions around this issue but one of the things that i found as troubling almost as troubling as the allegations of fraud by a number of the insurance companies, were conversations that i had with my colleagues about raising concerns that they had heard from their constituents in new york and new jersey about what

was happening to them. they had raised it with the program and that they had not gotten any attention to that until after the segment on 60 minutes really highlighted what had happened there. so i wonder if you could speak to that and to the effort to make sure that when complaints are brought before the agency that they are taken seriously, that there is some heck nichlmechanism whereby those are examined and responded to in a substantive way. >> yes senator, and the personnel moves were being made prior to the 60 minutes. i had to free up certain staff to make them available to be transferred in and that took more time, but we originally this came to my attention as something that was out there, but it was like we saw one or two cases, and i referred to the staff and i said, look guys what's going

on, we need to address this and focus on again if we owe more money why aren't we paying them? we found ourselves in a situation because we use right your wrongs to service policies we were working through a right your wrong. we weren't able to directly engage. as the process kept continuing i became more and more as frustrated as anybody on why we cannot get to resolving these cases. it if we owe money we pay. if there is allegations of fraud, then there's a mechanism to handle that. if we're having a dispute but litigation costs are going to be greater than what the settlement would be why aren't we moving to settle? i wasn't getting the response i wanted. so prior to 60 minutes we were already making changes but we had to free people up to make the moves, we had to reassign people, we had to start the process of changing out the leadership. and that was probably, you know, it started that really right after the thanksgiving holidays was we had made the decision we were going

to make the changes but we had to move the personnel and start that process of getting them slotted, getting them in place, getting them up to speed so we can start dealing with this. >> well, i appreciate that. i'm glad to hear that you were already taking action. one of the things that was pointed out on the 60 minutes segment was the -- there was a class action attorney who actually brought a number of these cases to the agency and that it took -- at least it was presented as taking that level of attention before it rose to the point of somebody taking action on that. so i'm glad to hear that you were addressing it and it seems to me that this is the kind of thing that we all ought to be on the lookout for every day as we're trying to make government work as effectively and efficiently as possible. so i look forward to hearing more about the

reforms that you put in place so that this -- this kind of abuse doesn't happen again in the future. i want to go back now to -- to one of the challenges that you pointed out in your statement, opening statement about putting together a budget for fema that works given all of the unknowns that you're dealing with, and as you point out, you have disasters that you can't anticipate in advance that the number of the severity, the type and so is you have to plan for that. so i wonder if you could spend a few minutes just talking a little bit about how you do that planning process, what's involved and how you allocate resources in it thinking about what might be coming up. >> well, there's two parts to this. the first is we do deliberate planning with communities based upon various scenarios, quite honestly you're

not going to have catastrophic disasters unless you have large vulnerable populations and a large risk so it tends to geographical define where that is it doesn't mean we don't prepare across the country. we do that, it identifies what the capabilities are. this helps goes back and drives some of the initiatives in our threat hazard reduction of areas we need to focus on to build capability, but another piece is budget. within the disaster relief fund one of the things that happened when you fully funded the drf is we've been able to maintain a healthy balance. when we had the colorado floods several years ago we weren't in the situation we were in 2011 with irene where we were out of money and congress was having to very quickly do a supplemental. by maintaining a balance of a billion dollars in the fund at the end of the year we were prepared for those no notice earthquakes or other ooents that were large scale that gives us the funding to do the initial response an ensures that congress has a time to do a deliberative process in determining the supplemental. so

maybe training that balance gives us that initial push for a response to a catastrophic disaster. we did this in sandy as well. if you remember although there was a lot of work getting to supplemental it was not about fema having to shut down or not do our jobs because we didn't have immediate funding. by maintaining that balance in the drf and allowing for that balance to stay there it protects the ability to congress to do deliberative findings when supplementless are requested versus having to respond to what in many cases is preliminary date at that. >> i certainly agree with that i think that makes much for sense and support that effort in having had communities in new hampshire who were affected by hurricane irene and still some of them are still affected by that, appreciate its much more important to have the funding there so you can continue the relief efforts throughout that process. the one thing i would say, and i understand the point

that you're making about planning for major disasters for areas where they're going to hit significant populations. the one thing that i hear from people in new hampshire is that even though it may be a small community or maybe even, you ne one farm one neighborhood, people will tl are affected just as dramatically by disasters as large communities like new york or some of the communities in new jersey. so that's why the efforts of fema make such a difference and they're so important. >> i agree 100%. senator again, we look at where the largest disasters can be to make sure we have enough capacity as a nation. that ensures that when you do have that disaster in your home state and we may have tornadoes in the south and then there's an earthquake on the west coast we're not pulling resources out of your state when you still need them. so this goes into our planning and actually drives some of our assumptions that we don't have one disaster at a time. >> right. thank you. thank you,

mr. chairman. >> senator baldwin. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as i mentioned, i plan to focus my questions on oil train safety and disaster preparedness in that regard. it's an issue i've been heavily involved in as my state has become one of the most heavily traveled routes to bring oil from the ball can to refineries on the east coast as well as the gulf. as well also as the ranking member of the authorizing subcommittee with jurisdiction over fema i've been very involved and a very enthusiastic supporter of the response act which would establish a subcommittee at fema to bring together experts and establish best practices to responding to oil train derailments and i look forward to two,ing with the chairman and ranking member of this subcommittee to ensure that fema grant programs are adequately funded to provide training and

equipment for first responders to respond to oil train accidents. mr. fugate, in your testimony you identified building capacity or capability for a catastrophic dis officers as a strategic priority. in wisconsin certainly my constituents who live on these rail corridors or along these rail corridors and state emergency management personnel have identified the increasing frequency of oil train -- trains passing through their communities as a catastrophic disaster waiting to happen. the growing number of oil train explosions in north america suggests that it is not a matter of if but when a train -- additional train accidents will occur and certainly we worry a lot about one in wisconsin. i want to ensure that fema is doing all that's within its

power to build its capacity to respond to such an incident were it to happen. i'd like to hear from you first off, sort of where and how the growing threat of oil trains -- oil train accidents fits into your strategic priorities and what fema plans to do in response to this significantly increasing volume of oil train traffic. >> well, senator, as we're not the regulatory agency over the event prevention i want to focus on consequences because that's what we really find that when we talk about specific hazards are we building capacity and capabilities to respond to the likely impacts from the most immediate firefighting operation, which we've been work through our center for domestic preparedness and national fire academy to update training but also what happens if that occurs in a populated area you have search and rescue operations,

warning systems, our integrated public warning system what most people think ever as the emergency broadcast and wireless emergency alerts working with states to make sure they have those systems ready to go so they can warn and evaluate populations, that we have teams that can support the teams if they need additional personnel to do search and rescue, communications equipment to support those responses but also looking at our grant program because that's really where most of the resources are going to be utilized in this. although the intent of the homeland security grants are to build capability for terrorism, it's also understood that the same type of capabilities you have to build for a bomb explosion would be similar to the type of capabilities you would have to respond to a train derailment. so, again, we don't preclude it we make sure that as we identify new threats that we look at our grant language to see if there's things in there that may be unintentionally not clear could be used from that. we don't have to subtract to attention that we

have to prepare for those type of events such as terrorism but it also means that other hazards that have capabilities that were building we want to address that from the standpoint of life safety, immediate response, communications, evacuation and sheltering. that's pretty much something you're going to need to do in a lot of different events. it's this idea that our grant dollars that have built a lot of capability are looking at where do we need to put more emphasis, right now our first work with dot is looking at training capabilities, new issues and we want to make sure that senior executives on the fire service have the latest but also looking in the grant programs and again as we see these threats emerging going because this is dual use, we do have the capability, we always going to the consequences. what are the things we need to do if that happens. from a lot of their emergency management preparedness grapts which again i support this administration's administration. those emergency preparedness

grants, those are some of the dallas they can be use to go develop those community plans. there are other programs that are not part of fema that have supported this before under the super fund reauthorizing act the epa administers. so there's a lot of different pieces out there that we can apply to this, but from our standpoint we're looking it at the consequences most heedly our training been looking at our grant programs and looking at gaps that this is exposing across the nation. >> if i could just follow up briefly on the training aspect of that. you talked about training and reaching out to senior executives but i am certainly hearing from rank and file emergency management personnel who feel that they are underprepared were an event like this to happen. specifically they feel they lack the resources to send first responders to require training or provide them the specialized foam that would be needed for example, to put out a burning

crude oil fire. and they don't feel like they're getting adequate information from the railroads themselves to respond quickly to an incident should one occur while a train is passing through their jurisdiction. i'm curious to know how much fema has engaged with the railroads themselves and do you believe that more action would be necessary from the railroads and oil producers in order to properly protect the citizens who live along these rail lines? >> we're not directly working with the railroads, we're working with our federal partners that actually do -- that have that regulatory oversight which is u.s. department of transportation. but, again we continue to work in the interagency on this. that's part of the reason why a lot of our training is being designed to be train the trainer and independent study type as we are sitting down going, what are the training needs, what can we already have that we can utilize and then what can we adapt.

so we are still in the process of developing and further examining what additional training needs are out there. we are also working back through the department of transportation with the industry itself over types of training venues that they have that we can also tie into all of our other training and make more available the visibility of what industry has out there for training, in addition to a lot of state fire academies, our national fire academy, our center for domestic preparedness and making sure that we have consistent training, we're looking at field delivery training, train the trainer. part of this is dealing with the most immediate -- what's the best information how do you deal with this and are we getting that ready to go and then looking at what are all the delivery systems that may be needed to get that out to the local level. >> one of the things i mentioned in my opening statement was making sure that as you work with flood mapping and remapping and flood insurance that you're coordinating with the planning

and the efforts by local communities to build permanent flood protection. can you tell me what you're doing, you're making sure that those two things work together in tandem because it's vitally important this terms of the cost of flood insurance for people that live in those communities. >> yes, senator, again all the way back to when you were governor we often had this challenge that our regulations would not recognize future projects in calculating risk as we were updating maps. so what we would oftentimes tell a community is that's fine, when you get it built come back and we'll change the maps, about you then we would have the issue of having to change rate several times, we knew this was funding authorizing coming on. i think you saw from roy wright that we're taking a more pragmatic approach. if we know the commitment is there and projects are coming on in a timely manner it does it make a lot of sense in the interim to change rates several times and not recognize that. so as we're going through this what we do want to make

sure is that the community has the commitment, they have the funding, they have the weather all and they are actually moving forward with that. i think from roy's perspective that is much more pragmatic to work with that community, not issue a map until we know that's online, but, again, we also want to make sure that munts are going to be moving forward because we don't want to delay that if there's risk out that there that people aren't aware of. if we know there's permanent work, corrective actions, things that are taking place that's going to fall outside of the updated map cycle and if we delay it for a year we would have the best data and recognize that, i think roy is working to be more pragmatic about that so we're not unfairly penalizing communities but we're not waiting to identify risk for indeterminate periods of time. >> and the ability to do that in phases is very important. in other words, if that can be koord maded, your process, with building that permanent protection, which is very often done in phases i think it makes a big difference for people.

>> second -- or the next question i would have for you goes to administrative cost as you know gao did a study an liesed your admin costs over 650 major dis officers between 2004 and 2013 and their ratio was about 13% in terms of admin costs relative to your disaster recovery fund and then they compared that to the states that had about a 3% ratio i think it was. so can you tell me, you know, why your admin cost is at the 13%, the state is at 3% and first why and then what are you doing to try to make sure that it's as cost effective as possible? >> well, those admin costs include a lot of the capabilities to respond to disasters that are rolled into that, it also means that the state is usually benefited from the jfo that we are leasing and a lot of overhead cost that we

build in our buckets the state does not have to deal with that. but you point out something that i've oftentimes challenged my staff is how much does it cost me to administer one grant dollar in a disaster and it's a range because it depends upon how many people you've got, what's the complexity and i'm like that's not a good answer. i'm trying to look at this at the same point you are, why do i have to establish all of these different tools if i don't need them in every disaster? so one of the things we've done is why are we establishing a physical presence if it's just going to be public assistance and i can send staff in work out of hotel rooms right the projects, i don't need a facility, security the it hookup. so we're to go virtual jfo's or joint field offices with the state and many of them appreciate it because it means they can stay in their workplace and get the work done without having to relocate to another location. so we are looking at what is it costing us are there different ways of doing t we're more inclined of doing virtual field offices instead of setting up a physical presence. we are

looking to drive down that cost but we also do things that are reporting requirements the states don't have the over jiet that we have, if you look at the post katrina reform we have a lot of oversight to ensure that we are delivering programs and eliminating fraudulent waste. as we go through that we're trying to go how do we do a better job of accomplishing the oversight without what the systems we built that sometimes are very cumbersome they're not that efficient, but they were the initial response to how do you provide that oversight. we're looking at both maintaining fiscal accountability and delivering the programs but looking at the mechanisms there's got to be a more effective less expensive way, as a state person i was oftentimes floored by the number of people that fema would bring in for external affairs, i would have two people, they would have 200. we had a joint field office in florida that had over 5,000 people in it and i can assure you half of that wasn't the state of florida. so i'm also sensitive to how much of a work force do we need to bring in to

support a state, how much is -- they've always done it that way and that's why we really pushed back on the number of people deploying, setting up physical locations and really focusing on the outcome of executing the disaster, not just going in and throwing in systems that had always been in place at a level that wasn't sustainable or necessarily required in all dis officers. >> do you have any type of statistic that show, you know what you've been able to save and or do you have any benchmarks as to what you feel you should achieve? >> we are benchmarking, the challenge i keep running into when i try to do disasters is there's such a range but i can come back and show you and show staff what it costs us to run a virtual joint field office versus what it would have been to set up a facility. we have to go in and lease a facility for so many months and have everything associated with that and we may only need it for a month to do what we need to do. so i can give you -- it's better if i show you some of those type of dis officers and show you

what it would have cost if we didn't do this versus what we had traditionally spent. i think as we build better analytics we're trying to get to this number of how much is actually part of the disaster response versus overhead to maintain the capability response and then looking at that on a case biy case bases, are we showing avis. some disasters like sandy are going to have a higher admin cost, it's in an expensive area to put people up in hotel rooms other disasters would be less expensive and others we're looking at are we driving the trends down and are we seeing overall that we're containing overtime, cost are we not, you know, doing things just because poo em have always done it that way to drive down the cost of each dollar we administer. i think i can give you some of the things we're working towards give you some case studies of disasters have we have done those reduction its versus what we would have spent before. >> you will show us some metrics on outcomes? >> yes, sir. >> okay. thank you. >> well, thank you. i agree, i

look forward to seeing those. i want to go back to your conversation can with senator baldwin because you talked about the importance of grant programs to preparedness and working with local first responders and local agencies and i certainly agree with that as governor after september 11th i can tell you very directly what a difference the department of homeland security grants have made in new hampshire to our preparedness. that's why i was concerned when i saw in the budget that you were proposing an 18% cut to preparedness grants a 28% cut to training and 1.5% cut to fire tighter grants. the recent fema preparedness report found eight areas where communities are still in need of improvement and i know that one of -- one of the proposals is to consolidate many of these grant programs and while i appreciate that there

are places that there can be efficiencies, i can tell you that those grants as i said, have made a huge difference in new hampshire and we leverage a little bit of money and make it go a long way and the firefighter grants, the other preparedness grants have really been critical. so can you explain why the proposed reductions? and i know that -- or at least my understanding is that the authorizing committee is probably not going to take up the consolidation issue and so that's probably not going to be an option in this budget and as i said i probably wouldn't support it if it were. so i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. >> well, two pieces, it's very straightforward. obviously i would like to provide the maximum amount of funding that we could provide in the grants programs, but as the administration as you have to make hard choices we have to fit

within our budgets we have to submit based upon overall priorities of the administration and this is a continuation of the president's request. so although congress has been able to find more money and have funded these grants at higher levels, we have been pretty consistent in what we've asked for. stars the consolidation of the grants, this actually went back to -- and both of you as governor my experience in florida since the ability to leverage dollars across the state, some states do a better job than others, but it really came back to as governors you have the emergency powers your institution establishes the emergency authorize, its consolidation of grants was really upon the governor and state and the position to help direct where resources were across the state you know your states better. i will give you more flexibility across those grants to make those decisions we also understand a lot of stakeholders don't have the same trust there, there's concerns about not all states may be as equitable in disturbing funds. as i've said, the reason we're

doing this is recognizing the role states have, governors and what state constitutions ep empower the emergency authorities and the creation of the political subdivisions are unique to each state. by consolidating these grants at the level of the governor it gives governors more flexibility to determine those priorities. that being said i've also said i will faithfully execute the budget that congress provides us with the direction you give us and that will be not up for debate. one of the national preparedness goal that is out for review says that fire management and suppression was added as a core capability, which makes total sense to me. and the request for grants for fire departments was a reduction and so can you talk about what a

reduction in fire departments would have on the distribution of funds to rural communities and volunteer departments and how we can on the one hand talk about a goal of fire management and suppression and talk about grants to fire departments and folks who need to make sure we're prepared for those fires. >> i think the structural firefighters goes back to the original framework while in fire fighting. and on a national level fires had been the one failure response most often but i had come out of the fire service so i have to be bias here as a structural firefighter. we do a lot of firefighting but in disaster we do the bulk of the search and rescue and emergency capabilities at the local level we felt it was

important they be recognized as the framework of the emergency support function that exclusively on wildfires. as far as the grants, the reduction will mean fewer smoke detectors and fewer breathing apparatus but it's a reality that when we have to force into a budget, everything and all priorities, these are numbers we were able to get and represent to you what we think is the administration we can fund. it doesn't mean there's not more demand or need, this is based upon all of the parties the administration has to look at funding everything from health and human services and ebola response and a lot of things i find myself dealing with, this is where we came out and we're able to make the recommendation. we also understand this is where we start the discussion. >> i'm glad to hear you acknowledge that it will have an

impact if we don't have that additional funding. i want to go back to the discussion about how you put together your -- several things that you include as new shouldn't say they are new initiatives but to upgrade the management structure, focus on i.t., on business management grant management and i cyber security, can you talk about why it's important to do those now and have those initiative rose to the top of what you were looking at in order to be more efficient? >> we had started this before being -- part of homeland security we found ourselves with grant modernization being wrapped in the initiative that did not later occur.

we have systems that are ancient. we pay so many in supporting and maintaining old systems that we think we can do a better job by modernizing the systems and reduce costs. in many cases we think we can have substantial reductions by upgrading to newer systems and pay legacy costs. this becomes a cyber security concern as well. when you have systems running on old, old systems, including the fact that microsoft is no longer supporting server 2003, but your systems are built on that, if you're not upgrading them, you increase cyber vulnerabilities xgt we've looked at our vulnerabilities on that end not a poster child at all for that. we've been documenting our systems and eliminating redundant systems no longer needed but we have reached a point where if we do not start upgrading these systems, not only will they become more expensive to maintain but not achieve the purpose of being able to be transparent and share

information with stake holders and quite honestly spend more time responding to your request by creating a spread she'll in excel to take the data to cannot produce to make your decisions. >> do you have estimates on how much -- how much you're going to save or how much the spending will balance out in the long term because of the efficiencies you'll be able to achieve? >> yes, senator, we've taken -- we're back and what we said is we're going to take small incremental steps and build on common operating systems and use government owned systems and move forward in the grant consolidation and modernization. we can show you from our time line if we appropriate funds for this what our milestones are and projected savings and what it's costing you right now to maintain the current systems and how we'll see those costs go away as new systems come on and

replace them. >> that's great, if that's something you have not shared with the committee, will you do that please? >> yes. >> we would very much like to see that. thank you. >> as a result of sandy, you received both authority to provide upfront funding for public assistance projects so that entities could get funding up front and to give them -- both to expedite the process and give them more flexibility to get it done. and then also, given authority to examine ways in which you could reduce disaster costs nationally. both of those seem like really good ideas and like you to respond in both areas. why aren't more of the -- why isn't more of the funding where it can be provided from, why isn't it being utilized more frequently? and then second, talk about your

strategy as far as implement being the national strategy? >> yes, senator, as with anything new there was a lot of concern that by doing a cost estimate what would happen if they discover something later on that wasn't anticipated they would miss out. they would be stuck with a bill. our first success actually came out of a case that was still pending from irene in the state of vermont and once they understood the flexibility to solve problems we have not been able to resolve, they moved forward with it and had the first success project. we've seen additionally a lot of resistance because of unknowns. as that success spreads, people are starting to understand this is giving them flexibility and ability to move forward with certainty on these projects and we are increasingly seeing more projects come in that will go this route. the amount that we've already approved and dollars going out

are in the billions. i am still working with the mayor of new orleans to finalize the projects till outstanding from katrina ten years later. i do not foresee that with sandy. where we are with the complex hospital using this charity we were five years and went to arbitration before we got an answer. we're already moving forward on funding in the construction and rebuilding and prepare of hospitals. so i think this is still the concern that what if they find things later. >> that's why we want to put the effort in on the front end. >> we don't need to rush that, i want to make sure it's a good solid number, once we have that nb and we can agree to it, do i really need to be there every time you change an order or you need to do something different to get a review? and i have do dole out money

each quarter and do the inspections? that's where the administer costs goes up. if we have a good product and good agreement and have fiscal tools in place and accounted for what was eligible and make that determination, then we should be able to move forward. i think as applicants become more familiar with that and see the benefits of it, we're going to see increasingly in particularly in large complex projects communities turning to this to speed up the process. >> what the is flexibility mechanism, the concerns are covered if they take the money up front and find out there is additional cost, what is the flexibility? >> part of that is, what we have done in many cases, we'll write a small grant to bring in an engineering firm and you've been through state bid process where you bid out a building and the person bidding on it made a mistake, they own the mistake. we basically take this up to where you got somebody ready to bid on that project, that's the number we want so we've done everything, they've done the

studies and done engineering sean done the due diligence. at that point you should be ready to issue the contract. if the person didn't do due diligence that's going to be their responsibility. we've tried to make this as seamless as we can with the best understanding of what it is when all of the eligibility is. if it takes us a year to get to that or something complex like a hospital, we'll take a year. once we get to that number, we want to be able to pay you, allow you to move forward and i allow you to do things we have historically not, from the standpoint of other federal dollars making decisions about increasing size with your own dollars, we were so con strained -- we can only do what was damaged. and if you need to do things that were going to prove that, we may not be able to fund it but shouldn't be an i am pediment to you, or utilizing community dollars to enhance something.

our process was always so restrictive that that was very difficult. >> this is much better. we build the mitigation on the front end. as you point out, a lot of times we'll build back based upon the past data, we have been back to that facility more than once because it got wiped out. we need to move beyond that. we have to look at not just building back to what we always looked at cost benefit analysis and make investments. this gives us the ability to move beyond just looking at one set of criteria. >> it seems that your mitigation effort has to be focused on the actual hazard. in this budget you're looking at additional funds for hazard mitigation but i would certainly want to know that is based on the actual hazard itself and mitigate both the hazard and

long-term cost for the federal government and the locality. and that has been the criteria for determining hazard mitigation. >> i can show you example where we have had predisaster mitigation. states have taken that like in oklahoma to do grants to families to build safe rooms for tornadoes. our goal is to reduce risk. there's a lot of driving factors of that and changing environment but when we want to look at, what are things as taxpayers if we can spend money on the front end and reduce future costs and potential disruptions to disaster. this is very much in our predisaster mitigation looking at it from outcomes that are based upon buying down risk, reducing risk or building more resiliency in the infrastructure that is hazard based.

there's a lot of things out there driving change. i have to look at the consequences of impact. that's where we focus mitigation dollars. >> again, i go back to the measure and show whether it's providing funding up front and flexibility, whether it's making sure that you're mitigating -- you've got to have a system to come back and have measurable -- >> how about lives saved? >> lives saved, obviously huge priority there. >> i've got to give you a little good news story. talked about in d.c., but few give you a concrete example. our fire administration collects fire information from fire departments, national fire reporting data base. we never had a good program of opening that data up and finally got the data we're providing it but what are we going to do with it? we've been working with red cross and red cross decided to focus on smoke detector installs

and areas that have had the highest risk to loss of life. they were able to take our data, match up the communities that use fire grant dollars and got volunteers and we installed smoke detectors and now have using data to drive where we met the installs 13 documented cases of lived saved where smoke detectors went off and people got out of the building. so we're using big data to leverage our limited funds, partnering with organizations like the red cross and getting outcomes we can document that those reports that people used to follow -- i always wonder, what are you doing with that? we're making the data available so people can use analysts and drive where's the most need and greatest risk? where can we make the biggest difference with our limited resources, i was talking to red cross this morning, they now have 13 cases where they had installed the smoke detector. it went off and people got out. and the data says that was a high risk area without the smoke

detector we would have probably had loss of life. >> where are you measuring that so we can track it. thank you. >> as you pointed out, what you're always looking to do is figure out where to spend money to mitigate potential risk and how you can be more effective in doing that. and one of the places where i think there's real potential is working with the private sector because as you know, government doesn't respond to disasters alone. it often has the benefit of using the private sector and fema's industry liaison program is one point of entry for those who want to do business with fema.

but i've got to tell you, i've heard from businesses in new hampshire that have not had a good experience with that program. and one of those in particular, i won't name because i haven't gotten clearance to use their name, but they have worked with marine corps, in haiti responding in new orleans responding to katrina, and they really wanted to try to market technology to fema. over the course of beginning in 2009, 2011, 2012, they presented to fema at three industry liaison vendor outreach sessions appropriate policy and program staff attended only two of those meetings. although initially officials appeared enthusiastic, the procurement staff limited the

agency employees from sharing business cards and regularly failed to respond to the follow-up phone calls and e-mails and when we try to inquire about the process and how to ensure they were getting a fair hearing, we were told they have to go through the normal procurement process. that's what they tried to do. can you talk about how you can do more to ensure when companies have good technology that can be a benefit to fema, that there is ab opportunity for them to be heard and you to take advantage of some of that technology where it exists? >> senator, given the time frames, we have changed leadership of the chief procurement officer it addresses some of this.

sometimes we're overly concerned about not obtaining potential bid processes and there are certain things we need to be careful about that we don't give favoritism to. they bring in industry and did this with i.t. and said here's where we're going, not giving anybody any one on one sitdowns because this is going out to bid. we brought everybody in and they were looking at looking at our i.t. as a potential vendor and we laid out what we are thinking about doing and what our time frames are and what the we'll work this but sometimes we overcorrect and not trying to get into procurement issues that may exclude companies from being able to present. and finding a better playing field so we don't mess somebody

up. as you know, if it's seen as giving favoritism and disputed bid, you have a bid protest. we have a new procurement officer, making it as transparent as possible and part of the tools are we want to do the meeting and try to set them up so we don't end up contaminating and industry days bringing groups around our mission and challenges and go here's what we're looking at and this is what we're thinking, we're going to be putting bids at this but have all of the presentation and they ask, less jaded than what we have. i think what you're probably running into, procurement office that was not where we needed to be but also to overcompensate and not always provide level of service without jeopardizing future procurement.

>> that's encouraging, there's hopefully a new process that is more transparent and an opportunity to be heard. thank you, i look forward to hearing how that works. there's one issue around the flood mapping that the senator has not touched on that i wanted to raise. and i think it's the final issue i would like to raise and that is around the new position of the flood insurance advocate, because one of the things that again we've heard, i think chairman said he heard in north dakota, there's a lot of uncertainty and not a clear understanding about how the new flood maps are done and what kind of community input is available and how decisions are made. can you talk about the new flood insurance advocate and what that

office will be doing and how they can help communities better understand the process of the flood mapping? >> i have to thank you for the funding and budget to stand the office up. we're approaching this from two ways, we think in servicing maps we need to look at building staff capabilities as advocates in the regional offices to be closer to attend meetings, knowing when maps are coming out. there's a whole process the community is involved in but having the advocate in the region not part of that mapping process but there to go out and meet with groups get issues and bring them back and dealing with claims issue, we think claims have to be made because we pay essentially. we don't want to wait and now building the office out, we started to take form, we still

have detailed staff but going to the job descriptions to be posting permanent positions to start the program on a more permanent footing. they are going to be housed as part of the flood insurance program but they don't report to the administrator, they report to the administrator fema. we put them in the office so all of the connections and logistical support and proximity would be there. their reporting chain other than signing off on time sheets and travel, everything else comes to the administrator. so as we move forward and establish that, we looked at specifically in maps the best place to coordinate but what we're still looking at workload do we need full-time or specific map revisions coming up, some map revisions are not contested and they are small, we may be looking at deployable staff as

we know we have a large project coming in or large community or a lot of concerns about it, we have staff to go in and detail for the duration of that update. >> i think this is sort of like an ombudsman to deal with flood issues within the office and i think this is a really positive develop the and look forward to hearing how it's working and to be helpful if we can. thank you very much, chairman. >> just a couple more questions and we'll wrap up. first is the talking about the preparedness grants return on investment and really what you feel a level of preparedness is across the nation and how we measure this and how effective they are in helping improve that preparedness across the country. >> part of or report that we again struggled with early on

was i can do a better job at telling you how much money had been spent and not telling what capabilities had been built. we're seeing through the threat hazard reduction and other surveys and state preparedness report that over time we're seeing the change and i can give you specific examples. the state of mississippi identified early in some of this they needed more funding for operation direction and control communications and manage disasters. with the grant funding that's matured and on the state preparedness report showing that they are more into maintenance mode and not building as much capacity. they are switching to other things like cyber but still see they need to make improvements in. between the state preparedness reports, we're seeing trends where people are shifting to other areas in maintenance or still identifying areas they've got to make investments in. part of this comes back to looking again at the tops of

threats and disasters and are we seeing capabilities being built out there. when you look at cyber, it's been consistent, one of the areas most states are identifying that they have a lot of work to do but it's going from we're just starting to we're seeing things come back on what they are doing. we can show you where the money has started that process of where we have bill capability and what that looks like and how it's being used you about how they are not shifting to other priorities within those areas. and what they do there. but then how do you turn that into some type of ongoing analysis where we can say okay, these grants are very effective and we kind are moving up the chain and what the impact is nationwide. how do you develop some system to track that and have a good understanding of where we are how much progress we're making?

>> again our national preparedness report we try to use analytics and double data to show here's what the data trends are doing and specific case studies where people have done that. the question we get a lot of times, high do we know when we're done? the answer is we're never done. one of the reality that's hard to explain, because we built teams and capabilities. people retire and move on, you have to train new team members and equipment has to be updated and technology changes and needs to be replaced. all of the laptops bought in first go around, that's ten years ago, you've had to replace those at least twice. maybe we need -- as we go through this and funding going through increasing every year to reduction and being stable, which i also appreciate, we're seeing communities make

decisions what capacities they need to maintain. some things they are making a decision no longer feasible or the change how we do business no longer requires it. but maintaining that capability and again, what you're seeing is starting in 2011, i can point to very specific disasters where previously had had a much greater response because of capability to build funding and federal role was to support recovery. for a lot of disasters, that's probably our best indicator we're seeing preparedness take place. as i tell people, sandy, when i look at what state and local governments did and what they were able to manage all the way from the carolinas getting ready for the storm, a lot was grant dollars built paid for and administered through all of the homeland security grants, that was the capability responded and the federal role is more a

support to that versus a primary agency which had been what we had had to do in previous large scale catastrophic disasters. >> done right, i think it can make a huge difference. between continuing to spend a disaster recovery money repeatedly year after year versus actually building the infrastructure through the preparedness grants, you spend lots and may spend more in one year but you're not -- you get out of this repetitive spending for recovery. >> part of the center too, we made decisions that we were funding each jurisdiction hoping it added up to being prepared and the reality is this through mutual aid to consolidate a lot of resources we as a nation built. we began changing language to recognize these are building national capabilities that you use at the local level and may use at the local level

exclusively until there's a large disaster somewhere else and every state that receives these they have to certificate that that state remembers a member of the emergency management system compact and when you look at the resources as national assets. that change began then leveraging do we need to have the same equipment in every jurisdiction side by side or could we start moving towards identifying hey, we've got a lot of search and rescue teams here. what we don't have are mortuary services or specialized communications to support that or as the case of the trains and other things, may have an emerging threat we need hazmat teams for. do we do everything or certain teams to start that process. but that to your point is really looking at we're building capabilities and capacity that is housed at the local level, used day to day at the local level but in a catastrophic terrorist event, there are natural resources to be

mobilized across state lines. we saw that in sandy, where a lot of assistance from outside of the area those funded with these dollars and built but shared governor the to governor dwrrks state to state in mutual aid. that's why we talk about a national framework and national preparedness not federal and fema because the frant dollars are building a national system. >> and that's working. you've got the coordination you need so people feel like those resources are available when and where they need it? >> again, senator, the ability for governors to share resources whether it's national guard or state resources is the foundation of that. we still work as some states do a better job internally of being able to activate vat local resources as part of that and others need more work. we continue looking at tieing back grants to that capability and getting communities, including urban security areas to recognize they are a national asset.

we're never going to strip resources where we need them but also seen time and time again some of the fastest most effective responses have come neighbors helping neighbors and governors helping governors and making it clear we need to build the capability around what governors do best in dealing with disasters. >> all right, i've got one more question then senator sheehan has one more and we'll wrap. can you comment your sense of solvency of the flood insurance program in terms of how we're going right now and how we're managing the national flood insurance program and all of these other steps that you're taking to both mitigate risk, hazard mitigation, preparedness, all of these steps where does that put us in terms of creating

long term solvency for the flood insurance fund? >> well, the challenge you have if you have average levels of flood events, the fund does find that the programs actually fairly well adapted to recurring flood risk. but it's not designed to handle well are large flood events particularly coastal areas where you're dealing with such large responses like a katrina or sandy and there are numerous communities, including in my old state of florida that have significant exposure to tropical systems. the program does not handle that well. if we see a normal level of localized flooding and events we typically experience outside of a coastal storm, the program has done well and paying back interest and debt. but we also want to make sure we're looking at some of the practices that i think we're finding as we look at what happened with sandy, we're

paying a lot of money to run this program. i want to start driving down cost like we're trying to drive down costs in our other programs, i want to look at these cost analysis, because does it make sense to spend this money to get this product? are there better ways to get a better outcome at lower cost? as we get into this, this is my third phase of the flood insurance. i have to deal with what happened in sandy and take the steps of making sure that doesn't happen again then my third step to go back in and fundamentally relook how we administer the programs through the direct service policy and service claims and going what are we spending to do that? what makes sense? how do we ensure we have a good product that stable available gets written timely and gets serviced timely and pays out what is owed at the least amount of administrative overhead? >> thank you. >> senator?

>> based on something you said, i had a couple of other questions. when you were talking to senator hoven about where the risks are and how effective we've been at preparedness across the country, can you map where those potential high threat areas are. in new hampshire, for example we can tell you where there are areas that need more coverage and where communication systems are inoperable and where we have teams that can address chemical or biological threats? so is there a map like that that exists for the entire country? >> it is in elements in the fields of visualization, we've got to get data to do things like that. we can do some things already. we can take all of the major

fault areas in the country and lay that down. then we can take the known locations where we have our federal urban search and rescue teams which you fund as well as the urban search and rescue teams that states have identified and overlay that and show what that looks like. so we have been doing that as we look at where threats are. what are the capabilities, one . one example is the abduction zone which would result. >> where is that? >> it's off the northwest coast. it would involve from british columbia to california. we have to look at communities in washington state and oregon and look at where would the resources come from. we do the same thing in the central u.s. we look at where are specific hazards we know that are geographic cal. whether it be storm batesed orsed,

or earthquake, or volcano. if you're in the area you might not be able to have immediate response. where would resources come from and how would you build that? as we do this deliberate planning we go through the lists of what the state and locals have what the gaps are. our ultimate partners with north come, we have both the locals the state, fema, and dod are looking at the same scenarios, and types of resources. part of it is looking at mutual capabilities across the nation. we started pulling a lot of units to respond to ie reen within the guard almost exclusively east of the mississippi. we asked the question what happens if we have another event. now you have resources all the way from the east coast. so we worked back to try to do

better visibility. where are the capabilitys? we know some places disaster is going to happen other places, we don't know. we look at where we have known threats and we plan for that. we also have the ability to then use that if we have an event occur that wasn't in an area that we planned for or had not been identified. we still had the same tools we've been building as far as where resources are and the type of capableabilityiescapableabilities. we go through disasters and what are the consequences and what type of assistance do you need. if you're going search and rescue, what are you doing? what kind of patient and how many. if you're shelters people, how many people need shelter and how long is the duration. if we know that we can apply the resources.

rather than waiting until it happens. it's coming back and taking a step back and going collectively as a nation there are going to be some events so big that if we're in the bringing in all of the capabilities of the nation we're going to be short falled. a lot of things that happened with katrina. there was not a lack of resources to respond. we did not have an effective way to plug resources in. you probably have people. we don't want to have that happen again. and you have to take a step back and say there are disasters bigger than the federal government. they're going to be so big that they're going to require that we engage the state and local governments not impacted as start of that response. that goes back to the grant funding. it's building capacity and capability we haven't had before by using tools like the emergency system compact. we have a framework and i've

never known a governor that wasn't willing to give everything they have, including more than they should send to help another governor out and citizens in their time of need. are we better prepared? yes. do we have a mechanism to prepare it? yes. do we have work to do? yes. we're no longer sitting and telling you how much money -- >> the most effective is when everybody mobilizes because that provides more resources to the effort. i just want to close with a final issue that you raised. you talked about hearing from states and localities about the threats from to the cyber security threats. i wonder if you can talk about what fema is doing with respect to grants to address cyber security threats what