and no one under $25 billion agricultural bill. and someone from the independent bankers association. "washington journal" white at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. . >> from capitol hill, this is 3.5 hours.

>> i apologize that i was detained, because this is a hearing of some considerable importance to the subcommittee. it is not about any disaster that we have seen, except 9/11 and katrina. it looks to the future in a way that perhaps we should have done before katrina, except that katrina was such an unimaginable event that it did not occur to anyone, i believe, to think of such a gargantuan matter. today's hearing will address very important new and unresolved questions that hurricane katrina raised for our

country for the first time. what is a catastrophic disaster? note that word, catastrophic disaster. think of it as a new invention. we have not used that word before. what is the role of the federal government before, during, and after these events? is additional authority needed to address response and recovery from these events? we cannot sit by and merely hope that out size to disasters such as hurricane katrina and 9/11 will never occur again. our obligation to the public requires investigation by the subcommittee to prepare us for the possibility of these contingencies. hese contingencies. wrecking katrina make landfall august 29th 2005 and prove to be the most costly natural disaster in american history.

on congress and particularly the subcommittee have spent the nearly four years since katrina looking at the action of the federal current as well as state and local governments, voluntary agencies as citizens themselves from response to recovery. which continues to this day. on the golf course -- on the gulf coast. today's hearing focuses on next that the. of what it did we learn from hurricane katrina as well as other disasters in the united states and the air around the world practice concerning what should be done to respond to a catastrophic disasters and to facilitate recovery most important, what steps should all concerned be taking out cracksman into prepare for in mitigate the risks the lives and property from these events? the robert t. stafford and disaster relief and emergency

assistance act where stafford act which was signed into law november 23rd, 1988 but is not clear and that congress contemplated gargantuan disasters with recovering proceeding for years. they -- authorized by our committee is the federal government's primary authority for addressing major disasters from all hazards and dividends and for the most part of this authority has proven sufficient to address all types of disasters and emergencies, but it is an open question whether the stafford act is sufficient when measured against the background hurricane katrina now provides. the stafford and denominations rich as a management system are grounded in our federal system of government that recognizes

how that the primary responsibility to address the sasser's an emergency use resides with states and communities, not the federal government. as a result, the assistance provided after a disaster is as the stafford act provides to and i am quoting here, supplement, supplemented their efforts and a valuable resources of states, local governments and disaster relief organizations and quote. unwilling, however, it is already clear that one characteristic that distinguishes catastrophic disasters in from other disasters is that the magnitude of a huge disaster who often has national impacts, national impacts, impact beyond the seat of the disaster. homes rather than of expletive

to a particular state or community. we must therefore reevaluated the role of the federal government as well as the fema's authorities, policies and regulations that presume federal assistance is always supplemental. regardless of the disaster. the safra and to existing authority and systems where the russians use and disasters that the country will face is are so detailed and time proven that this landmark statute provides necessary base for additions or revisions if needed to however defined it is treated teaches that capistrano disasters are complex, unusually large and a fax, hard to predict and expensive. moreover there are distinguishable because had they

require months rather than days or weeks were coming months in the and probably years and will rather than days or weeks to move from a response to recovery inevitably there for the subcommittee cannot avoid the question of whether new extraordinary authority should be given to the presidents of the united states in advance and whether congress should provide an wamp for the recovery from catastrophic disasters that is specific and targeted to the size of these unusually large and pervasive events. the subcommittee looks for to hearing the testimony of today's witnesses to help us address how we can prepare for these catastrophic events. we particularly welcome if administrator craig fugate has taken office and is testifying before this committee for the first time.

i am pleased to ask, ranking member mr. dsos balart if he has any opening remarks. >> thank you read much madam chairman and actually i want to thank you for holding this important hearing. obviously for the witnesses as always for their contributions and their expert testimony, is good to see usurp. i also want to welcome a madam chair administrator administrator fugate in his first hearing before this committee in his new position now. hill lien he has been doing this kind of thing before at a different level and it's going to, i excited he is a way that the federal level. after hurricane katrina, congressman made it clear we needed a fema administrator who knows what he is doing and has authority to get the job done and the precedents i think found the best person in the country. with a person who knows what he is doing and who has unfortunately a lot of experience dealing with the

large and small in emergencies and again i have tremendous confidence in it administrator fugate and i really looking for to continuing to work with him and hopefully he will not be too busy, that's something we are hoping for. i also need to a balanced the tremendous work that congressman balckout has done to speed the recovery finding in louisiana. we still have issues after the storm. he has held several rounds tables with fema acid and local officials and members of congress. i've been involved in some of them and frankly he has held to free up hundreds of millions of dollars for those stricken by katrina here he has also been working closely with the experts such as the witness today as mccarthy of the congressional research service on possible changes and recommendations to the stafford act. i believe money of the options will be presented to that committee for informing the stafford act and a direct result of congressman average spent and

i thank him for his aggressive involvement with this committee and a semper and issues. now, obviously as the chairman said pitching it was a horrible huge devastating hurricane. unfortunately as we know it is very unlikely that will be the largest on the hits us where the most large as catastrophe and damaging one that hits our country, category five hurricane in south florida could come at any moment were unwilling and 18.0 earthquake in california or pandemic food and we keep hearing about that right now are all those possibilities that could hit us at the time so what disasters obviously got large, would stress to the entire emergency management system but i want to focus on a few import areas i think are the most concern there needs to be obviously a clear federal chain

of command. week and that is essential head during a catastrophic disaster and they can be a critical point of failure and as we saw during katrina. i have mentioned this before and i mentioned earlier as well, congress changed the law to assure the nation has a qualified, qualified as fema administrator who does what he is doing who could coordinate the federal response on behalf of the president. now unfortunately the president has yet to to obtain the presidential directive on incident management which is below age as nga and to reflect this change in dhs has built a duplicative incident management organization outside of fema. and congress continuously tries to defund the and i will do get into that later so as i recall the entire reason fema has to be within dhs when so that if we could use fema to manage the

response dhs and the government could use fema to manage the response to a terrorist attack. and yet for the last three years dhs has built a parallel incident command structure that bypasses fema. again, it makes no sense. as a result, it is frankly not clear to me or to some of the witnesses of our witnesses who will be in charge, those who will be in charge and to coordinate the federal response if the secretary decides to appoint a principal federal officers known as a plo during the disaster. who would be in charge? fema or this outside the plo? this confusion is a recipe for failure and also another thing madam chair the department needs to follow the law and you even have written letters to the president on this. another critical issue i hope we can address is the role of the department of defense. during a mega disaster

department of defense forces will be needed quickly in and i understand there is an effort to thwart, first obviously what is the effort of dod, they need to be quickly and we saw how well how they responded during katrina. and i have to be well coordinated with fema and a half to be a supporting role to the states, this is when they run out of resources is when you need dod to come in and if it is a big disaster to come in big red anderson that debarment is recommending a change when responding to disaster and have heard that the change and potential change has caused frantic considerable concern among a number of governors and i have to admit that i share many of the governors' concerns. so i hope we can talk about that. another critical failure something the chairman has brought up many times and never had a hearing in south florida and when you brought that up to do with the housing issue.

what to do with the 500,000 or so over a million families force out of their homes by one of these horrible catastrophic disasters. despite the release of national disaster housing strategy, there is still no clear solution to addressing the housing issue at that scale. i do need to commend it fema forum i read that there are looking at other options outside the box even looking at the possibility of some cases using homes and that may be under foreclosure so i commend fema for thinking outside the box but again we need to make sure that we have a strategy for the big storm or big event when it comes. mitigation in preparation are issues that must be examined and improved. i integrated the public early alert and morning act, along with chairman norton and the

subcommittee. i also introduced the state building code incentive back. both bills are intended to help prepare for a big storm and to mitigate against disasters. but providing for states to enact building codes it is an effective, common-sense way to minimize damage and the loss of life that a catastrophic disaster could entail. we have seen that it does work. and developing an integrated public alert warning system is critical to saving lives. with countless methods of communication available today, twitter, facebook, e-mail, etc., we are still using a 1950's model, the lead on our tvs and radios. that is not enough. there are more ways we need to communicate. have raised in past disasters of all sizes but the big one, the catastrophic disasters magnify obviously

their significance and importance of its support for as to determine if the current supreme court is out acquits for a catastrophic disaster or should there be some are capabilities and flexibility in, so i hope we will hear from witnesses today on these and other issues analysis thank you madam chair for convening the meeting began, one of the issues that is a lot to all of us and for those of us who live in seis pros to disasters, thank you. >> thank you very much, you raise some of the questions that have been before us. mr. kaul, and you have any opening statement? >> thank you madam chair, first of all i would like to on behalf of my constituents think the chairman and ranking member for holding this important hearing today and for their sustained when attention to how the recovery of the board parishes and i also appreciate their

recognizing and a significant challenges to recovery presented by certain aspects of the stafford act and what we are talking about the stafford act one of the questions that we are is whether we should freeze and the act in a separate incidents level and for a catastrophic events and to help us clarify what these terms may imply an ally to tell you what katrina, many of the political institutions like charity hospital and basically the entire health care infrastructures in the heart of the early as these have never reopened and other basic services like police and fire and rescue, libraries and schools were wiped away by the flood waters and are simply today path shells for buildings. in the immediate area around orleans 80 percent of the buildings and 40% of a them were damaged in some way of. who in my mind hearing in the

mind of my constituents was pitching in to the gulf coast and to orleans and generous and parishes was without doubt to a catastrophe after katrina whom would i spend a significant amount of time talking to my constituents and also to federal officials with administrator administrator fugate, mr. mccarthy about what changes need to remain to this effort act, we are taking a comprehensive free look at the saturn aga and the recollection supported and i was secure supports madam chair mr. ranking member in these efforts. this navidad is currently setup to provide recovery dollars on a project by project basis. her for the gulf coast dates that were hit by hurricane katrina and rita, this is not optimal due to the extent of distractions. that i that we're nearly four years for these events and the states and fema are still

arguing over doorknobs of whether a building that was flooded that is and falling down was more or less than 50 percent damage to demonstrates this. link in catastrophic cormack disasters the states and localities maintain the flexibility to rethink and replant the recovery and have other mitigation plan. they need to have a flexibility to decide whether rebuilding in the pre disaster for a. is the best solution for the committee's long term. what are some of the fixes that i hope you look at? in regards to this stafford act? us -- legislative regrading a level for catastrophes or mega disasters are rich in holistic look at the community's needs to be taken, this is the feasibility of lump-sum settlements and mega disasters like that which was then decided

to respond to the disaster of september 11th. shifting more responsibilities to end their by incentivizing states and localities to prepare better for disaster is so, for example building codes to another recovery dollars ultimately provided by the federal government, this is something that the ranking member has been working on the legislation and i am proud to support this. will revise and the management structure and other agencies to shift decisionmaking from the upper level management where bottlenecks occurred to the staff that is on the ground and meeting with local governments representatives on a daily basis. in the course of my conversations and with the tough part is, it has become abundantly clear to me that fema employees have been almost indoctrinated to believe that they are handcuffed by the sack

and therefore i can't come up with out of the box solutions. when you have a major disasters like hurricane katrina we made a free thinking, but fema employees are allowing themselves to be admired in red tape causing them to retreat from a difficult questions and prieta solutions by hiding behind in the stafford act and what it does is not allowed. um my reading of the stafford act and is that there is incredibly flexible piece of legislation that was always in this is to provide a framework, the real problem is for decades fema has been putting what regulations on top of each other which is what is hampering fema employees. fema has restricted its up with an consistent recollection of the summer so that they can't be a partner in communities recovery which is what they ought to be part of what i am

hopeful that secretary of pilots, in administrator administrator fugate will have the same sort of a sudden awakening about the restrictions to fema and that they will fundamentally reworked the recollections tampering performance. however, i want to make it clear that if we don't see real progress in freeing of the creativity and private thinking of employees we will draft legislation that requires you to do some. with that i'm looking for into your testimony in the i hope and to work with you further in the future to look and an stafford act and how we can improve the cooperation of fema with the state and local employees. thank you very much, madam chair. >> with thank you. we are very pleased them to welcome our colleague, was of iowa who has a remark and testimony and his own him and, please, receive them at this

time. >> well, i went to think chairman norman, ranking member, members of the subcommittee for giving me the opportunity to testify today. i'm not the experts, i am just a congressman from the second district of iowa an area where we have essentially our own katrina in june of 2008 and is really this was wonderful for me and at the outset here to listen to my colleagues. and i really appreciate what you have to say because well in new orleans is that the soda and of the line if you will as far as mississippi river is concerned, and we're way of north there are a lot of things when what i think we have in common in terms of our thoughts about how to do this differently and i do what two say at the outset i think fema did a good job in iowa. and has done a good job but there are a lot of things that obviously can be changed so i'm looking for to working with you in the future as to how we can change things and i want to say at the outset that i said three

out with this first happened in iowa in june of 2008 there is nothing partisan about catastrophes. there doesn't matter whether republican or democrat, you'll get hit by a catastrophe in working together i think in a bipartisan way is really an absolutely critical and so i am looking for to in this as well. are flooding in iowa was to a 500 year flood, 85 of the 99 counties were presidentially declared disaster areas and represented 85% of the entire state. to some of the hardest-hit areas in my district cedar rapids, iowa city, all built, carl bildt, estimated that cedar rapids alone has nearly $5.6 billion in recovery knees, one city of 120,000 in iowa, $5.6 billion in recovery means. with this in mind and consider that about 3 billion has been allocated to the entire state of

disaster recovery which includes a large amount of states funds even though damage statewide was estimated at about $10 billion. when considering what constitutes a catastrophic disaster one indicator was maybe useful to consider it would be the damage relative to income is your state budgets in this city by what had receipts for f509 of $6.9 billion. compared to the estimated 10 billion is a wide damage. in the city of cedar rapids have a budget for at y09 of nearly 380 million in keep that in mind and think about the high price $6 billion in needs. that further bring the magnitude of this disaster in perspective and calculating as with a damaged cruise be that public assistance program at the i was a range as the fifth largest disaster in u.s. history. and if you take away nothing from my testimony, will be size of a large to lob significance

of a widespread attitude of the disaster i will have accomplished something here is my job to keep this in the forefront of your minds and the american people. fema was not our only source of assistance. many federal programs and agencies or mobilize and utilized during and after our disaster. fema agreed to lower the cost share to 10% from our public assistance categories and waive the cost share completely for others because we have to get waivers and exchanges and changes to the current law we have to work to put in place and this was one example. an additional application for the individual assistance disaster of assistance and public assistance were extended and numerous other waivers were granted to federal departments or agencies. i also work with my colleagues in the last congress to pass a supplemental disaster relief appropriations bills and the largest of these allocated to i was $800 million comes from the committee to develop a block grant from hud. it's my understanding that the

right to use of the funds after hurricane katrina continues to be an issue as well and as to was made of housing. a with the funds are not traditionally used as you all know for disaster relief. and therefore they're not ideally suited to be flexible and that commendable and now this is something i heard from you folks, then the printable this if you will to lead to immediate post disaster recovery needs of cities and communities. how secretary dog said it during a visit that the state of iowa in cedar rapids are models for officially utilizing the funds for disaster recovery. i am proud of that decision by to have to wonder why at this point the federal government is still looking for models of efficiency. i know it has of an easy journey from my district and the journey is far from over but as city rapids and i want to provide examples of best practices for the future, then i look for to working with secretary john evans to all of you on this

committee to those who are about to testify to mr. huang administrator fugate and so we can deal more offensively and more officially with these issues when they arrive in a catastrophic disaster is. and perhaps i think maybe we should be and with a simple assumption, that we are going to be faced with catastrophes in the future. of we have to simply accept that fact. i know that in the past we said that we knew that but i think all of us who have been through these catastrophes or other it in france we really believe there are going to happen again because we need to be better prepared and said thank you very much for allowing me to testify and i appreciate this opportunity and will turn it over to the experts and i'm looking for to hearing what they have to say reading their testimony. no continuing to work with our relevance administrators at the federal levels of thank you

reminds her that opportunity to testify today. >> thank you, you have introduce a new element, one that i am not sure is a unit is really very much worth looking at, the costs of of events versus one budget although that is the annual budget of the state so that is a matter we should look into as another element in savings has been considered before. other any questions? >> thank you come in a brief comment, it's interesting you say that, those of us who have gone through it become aware of its, of those catastrophes and you are right about making sure that we continue to remind people that this is going to happen and it's not wise to happen only in one part of the country but anywhere at a time. your observation about the incidents on nonpartisan is a shrewd as well as i'm proud in particular of this committee the response of congress in particular t c