debate with the left, when prepared we can win. and it comes back to you have to do the work so you are prepared when it counts. but what happens is if you set the goals and if you do the work you need to do, when it comes time to get the job done. you will have the confidence it takes to perform under pressure. it's as basic as it gets, do the work, develop the confidence that allows you to compete under pressure. . .

>> now, are there areas in the defense budget you can probably have some fun.

certainly, we should do that. the left wants it target defense first. everything else should be exactly the opposite. if there's some savings we can achieve, we should do that. that shouldn't be the first place we are looking. afghanistan is still involved in iraq, not to mention everything else we do around the world. we have to be careful. >> i appreciate you coming to speak with us. >> i'm from the university of arkansas. >> you got a voice for radio too. >> my question for you is as a supporter of camp balance myself, i appreciate all the work you did for that. i was a little surprised to see criticisms come from the right. i like your analysis saying it

would lead to tax increases or judicial activism trying to decide what is the tax amendment and what is the wartime amendment. what is your response to that? >> they were wrong and we were right. >> those are valid concerns. that's why you have to draft it right. we would certainly lock at drafting it appropriately, correctly in a way that safe guarded some of those concerns you raise. let's cut to the basic premise. everybody has a balance budge he had, every family, small business, township, county, city, state. the only entity that doesn't have a balanced budget requirement is one that has a $14 trillion debt. this idea that we don't need it,

really. is that the last 40 years proven, we definitely need it. it's the one real game changer when you think forward it will require the politicians to do what they think they'll do. everyone likes to spend money. everyone likes to spend money politicians like to spend other people's money. if there's no limits on them, they keep spending we were in control. during state budget time, they line up outside your office and line up to say your program is wonderful. finally, i said to one of our

staff, when did the taxpayers come to talk to me. they have an invested interest of hanging out and getting the tax code written in a way that benefits them. so politicians and until you say, no. time out. end of game. we are not playing anymore this way. we are not going to solve it. we've seen that. the truth is even the party i belong to spent too much money. they spent too much money. this new administration was taking it to a whole new level. some argument from conservatives was we can't get it done. my argument is if you always followed conventional wisdom, nothing would matter. this wouldn't be a united states of america. you have to say look, we are going to fight. if we can't really challenge the president now, he's got a 42%

approval rating. he has a national plan, let's see which one wins. was it a long shot, sure. >> when you look at how serious a situation is, why not engage over our balance plan and his plan which you never put on the table particularly when he has a 42% approval rating. >> i'll be starting law school in the fall. my question for you, you talked about how you are not in support of the bainer plan. it is something i'm not a big supporter of either. do you think somethingic loo that is typical of what our congress will come up with in the future again or probably a real conservative solution.

it's divided government. i understand. i just got done talking about the plan we were pushing. the speaker supported when we first went through the house. it was tough. it was a long shot to get it done. i thought it was a long shot to get it done. the speaker's proposal was good. it never really happens much around this place. kept tax ip creases out of any type of agreement. i appreciate the speaker's job there. john bainer has a tough job. you negotiate with harry reid. it's tough. i appreciate that. i felt the magnitude is such we needed to try to do something bigger. that's why we supported the plan we did, the cap and balance plan. we thought it made sense. if we look at our plan. the support that came out of the

house. the final deal was put together that did. the other thing i said was this, one thing i'm just convinced of is americans don't want deals, they want a solution. they are tired of washington deals. they'd like an american solution. we felt like our plan was the one plan with by partisan support. it was the one plan that would prevent a downgrade. the one plan the american people supported. >> 66% said that makes sense. cut spending in the short term and cap spending moving forward and have a balanced amendment. thinking from a political stand point. if we had a balanced budget amendment out there, that's good things to be talking about. that's ground. pretty good for conservatives.

if states are talking about balanced budget amendment, it's all good. that's why we push so hard for our plan. >> thank you. >> you talked about having a strong relationship with god. how did you come to recognize what his plan was for you? >> i think it is the good lord actually causes you to be interested in things and you have certain skills or talents and you naturally focus on those things. for me, it was wrestling. i got to the point where a couple things happened for me, i had been assistant coach eight years. it was time to go bet a head coach in the big tenor something else. i was interested in politics, i thought something about a campaign, that's as close to a wrestling match as it gets.

i got interested in the state rep position opened up. i decided to do it. we try to figure out what i want to do, what are my goals, you just sort of figure it out based on the skills you have and interest you have. that's how it worked for me. i've known my wife since we were in grade school. she'll tell me, i can't believe you are in politics. she does a great job with it. >> thank you, congressman. >> you bet. >> i am from europe, pole and, the university of warsaw. you mention that had politicians should work hard. my question is what is more important for politicians to have personal care appropriate

education orren dpajment in the current affair and what is going on in politics? >> i want to make sure i understand. you said what is more important educational background or being up to speed on current events? >> yes, that was my question. politics is the one career you don't have to have any education for. i shouldn't say it that bluntly. you done have to have a degree in this area or that area. you don't even have to have a college degree. if you can -- i used to tell folks back home. if you can get 50 valid signatures to sign your petition and you pay that, what is it? $85. you get 50% plus one to vote for you, god bless you. that's the beauty of america.

the people get to decide. they may not care if you have a degree in finance or no grow at all, what they probably do care is if you are going to fight for what they believe in. though want to send someone -- it is a representative democracy. they send their member of congress there to a lookout for their interest. they send him or her there to make judgements on the issues based on the data and the facts and all the hearings they get. they don't completely forfeit their ability in congress. we are supposed to be that body closest to the people. it is the balance we have. they may want to send someone there. maybe they don't, it's up to the people. i think more about what you believe in and how you relate

and fight for the things your families and taxpayers in your district believe in. >> thank you very much. >> you bet. >> where's ron? >> that last four. i didn't know how long i was supposed to stay here. how many speakers have you had to listen to? >> they've been pretty boring? >> all good? another politician. just what i wanted. >> resent graduate, i was wandering if there's really a plan out there to cut the debt quick enough. cuts $4 trillion. we'll have $10 billion wracked up. is cut and balance quick enough to fix the coming interest payment in the near term. it's not really fixing the problem. >> the truth is no one really

knows for sure. smart people say that will get the thing moving the right direction. we are on this crazy path now. you have to turn it and then overtime, you can get to balance. that budget would pass, sponsored by congressman ryan. we offered a more conservative budget and got the balance in nine years. the left says that's crazy. re really? 26 years left to balance your budget. that's crazy. i talk to folks back home in the 26th district. they are like suck it up. >> the truth is what the president has proposed. never balanced and it spends forever. you can't do that. you got to turn it. you have to deal with the real cost drivers in the budget which are you have to save medicare

and change it to save it. people will tell you, we can't change medicare. the people who want to keep it as it is, they can't last under the current. you have to begin to change it. that's what paul's plan does and our plan does. remember this. here is what is working to our advantage as well. the numbers are bad. the good news is, we are still the biggest kid on the block. we are the largest economy in the world. you hear about china and india and the growth there, we are still bigger than those guys. that helps us. the numbers aren't good. we are still the united states, the biggest player in the game. that helps us and gives us some time. as i said earlier, the amount of time we have to fix it is closing. we have to get after fixing it.

while this debt ceiling thing wasn't something i supported, it was still the step in the right direction. we got to keep turning it. if we do that, the real test will be what standard and poors says in a few months. we got to make sure the real test will be the market. what we need more than anything else is economic growth. growth grows a lot of problems. you want to grow, creating jobs. you are growing in paupt 4%, that's when good things start to happen. you do the right things here and get economic growth, that's how you solve it. >> thank you. last three and i'll go quicker here. >> i was wandering what you really saw as the purpose and scope of the federal government in particular, you mentioned if you see legislation that's in

favor of the family or what would helped family you would want to vote for, which is wonderful when you are in office. how do we handle that value of legislation when someone doesn't hold their value in the office. >> that's what the federal government should focus on. we do a lot of other things outside of that. i ask the question how many think there might be a little waste in the federal budget. anyone? >> just instin tiffly, some people would say with the exception of the military, tell me something the federal government does really well. there's programs that have been in place a long 1?time. we made a promise in terms of soernl security that's a promise we have to keep. the idea is we have toscale it back. now, everyone understands you have toscale it back.

one thing we have to focus on is the national defense. they've brought a lot of energy. that is great. they are great patriots that understand the basics, quit taxing us to death. they understand the basic things that are just good common sense. we've been close to the tea party movement in our state and around the country. they are a great force in politics. they are that force that will keep republicans acting like

republicans dik army had a great line. he said when we act like us, we win. when we act like them, we lose. the idea of the tea party is acting like republicans which is what ronald reagan thought this party was about. i know the congress is spending a lot of time with the debt ceiling on the budget. do you feel there are any issues conservatives should be looking at? >> we need economic growth. you need reform, tax reform and

the right energy policy. we need to be talking about all of those. it is important for. it is important for people running for president of the united states to portray an optimistic view of our country. president obama in 2008 came speaking of change. reagan did it

>> thank you. >> all right. thank you all very much. >> patricia powell outlines what

people should be doing. marvin and debra kalb discuss a haupting legacy. washington journal live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. >> the house of representatives have been off eight weeks this year. i sure didn't. >> trying to take a slightly more irref represent view of washington and the u.s. >> we are willing to step outside the box and try something different and figure out how to make tv news exciting and entertaining and informative rather than the garbage it really has dwindled down to be. >> she'll talk about her show on "q&a." >> talking about the challenges

facing the labor industry. she spoke to a group called jobs of justice. this one is 30 minutes. >> i'd like to recognize a hero among us. joe, give them a round. i didn't see another colleague that is here. larry cohen from cwa for having

the foresight to begin this organization. almost a quarter century ago. thank you for everything you do. >> also to each and every one of you for coming here today and spending your saturday. it means so much that you care. i just have to say to you from the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here and supporting jobs with justice. [speaking spanish] . >> we have folks from around the country that are here today. your labor, community leaders. i know students and leaders fighting everyday representing working people in 46 cities and 24 states across this country. you are doing very hard things

organization, organization. everyday you are organizing folks, you are in our neighborhood and knocking on doors and neighborhoods. today that our brothers and sisters are facing around the country. this is how we will win working around the country. i know it is early in the morning but just by reading in

the morning and what you are going to be committed to, i ask you are you fired up? are you ready to go? ready to move? i say yes we can. yes we can. yes with can and yes with well. thank you the day after president obama named me the finance secretary. i said there's a new face in town, a new renewed face in

government. understand what is said here. we know most american businesses play by the rules. that is to say that they pay their taxes. there are a few bad actor that's don't. they need to understand that we won't let them take advantage of our law that's government our country and the work place. after being sworn in, you need to know because of the help we had from this administration, i was able to hire up for the first time than maybe more than a few decades more than 300 investigators to work a wage an hour and to help ensure if workers are paid properly in the work place for work that they have already completed. you need to know we've collected hundreds of billions of dollars in back wages from employers who have cheated workers out of

money that they are legally owed. even with this extra man power, even with our enforcement successes, we know that the department of labor can't be at every single work sight in this country. to make sure we are listening to workers and ensure we allow organizations to help protect all work rers groups like you'r help to serve the roll when

groups are exploited, underpaid and cheated and sometimes threatened with did he portation you know all about the case of vanderbilt landscaping in nashville. you helped to lead the fight here were a group of workers. they were paid less than minimum wage. they violated outright the fair labor standards act they misrepresented workers themselves jobs with justice

helped to get the word out. we didn't stop there. because of the violationses they won't bre able to hire any worker at all for the next three years together with the scloouded workers congress, you have fought for the workers that they discern wage fraud is illegal and immoral we cannot

stand by. i'm excited to be here today for so many of those reasons. your enthusiasm is con stagious. everyday i wake up, i think about ways to find workers good paying jobs. the government wants to build upon that. they want to provide more jobs for construction workers to help build more roads and bridges and water ways middle class families can have more dispose al income to keep our small businesses growing and keep people

employed. did you know that the president is fighting for an extension of unemployment benefits if we do not move on that these are all issues that we have spoken and talked about in prior years and months we need to make sure we continue that we can create new high paying jobs for everyone that's why i authored the green jobs act almost four years ago i

knew the power that it could unfleesh why not allow for all that is my standard. that is what i would like to see happen as we push our the jobs in education lifting the program. the program works we want to make sure trade policies don't exporter more jobs, that they enable us to provide products here to send overseas that other

people will buy. we need to promote things that are made here in america. he took some bold action by working with the big automobile corporations. some of you may say well, i don't totally agree with all of that. those workers are proud. now we have auto workers working more shifts now that's the story

we have to tell manufacturing jobs are very important to our economy we must do everything we can to produce good products and services here in these united states jobs for justice, we can't do it on our own. we need to help you to have your voices heard. right now as you know in states across this country. state officials, governors are using this crisis to use as an excuse to take the country on a downward spiral and to attack clkt yift bargaining rights

you've helped collect 1.3 million signatures in ohio to help citizens vote to have their voices heard officials are now facing a recall election politicians need to understand american workers still want and need a seat and a voice at that table. to demand and make liveable wages to give them a chance to earn a better life for

themselves president obama understands labor unions are not the cause they have have always helped supporting a strong mediation board committed to ensuring the union elections are democratic. under the old law, anyone who didn't vote was counted as a vote against the union. that doesn't make sense.

jo at our department of labor, we are doing one too. we are reporting new roles to report spending on those attorneys and consultants that they hire to persuade workers not to form a union. i'm asking you to recall the 40,000 tsa worker who were able to vote for a union for the first time.

these are important mile stones. what about the 4,000 faa workers going back to work and the 70,000 construction workers building and repairing our airport. i want to tell you i know what it is to be a part of the union. it become clear to me my father represented the teamsteres. he represented immigrant workers in a battery recycling plant. my mother worked for many years in a toy factory i will not name and later fled the state and went south. never came back. she worked there proudly with the united workers. i'll never forget that.

growing up in my community in a small town called la puente, california. it was hard. we were a family of i am grants. the environment was not always clean. we lived near several fun signs, gravel pits several miles away, the air yoi code is 90210, beverly hills, there are zero land fills, chemical plants. i grew up with a strong understanding that there were have and have notes in this world my father taught me there was a difference in the union.

growing up, i remember distinctly sitting down with my father, he'd say come sit here. i thought what did i do? >> he would reach into his pocket and pull out crumbled papers. there were skrib willings on there in spanish and he would recite what was written. he had me translate them in english. what they were were grievances of workers he represented at that battery recycling plant. the work was dirty and harmful. conditions weren't safe. my dad taught me that injustices in the work place exist. workers needed to have a voice and someone to represent them in

the work place. my mother helped to teach me to honor and respect all care givers to keep our family strong. one of the first jobs was to serve as a domestic worker. domestic workers do some of the hardest work out there. it does wat matter. it matters to the elderly man that needs help opening a bottle of medicine they are indeed what

we rely on. millions of workers struggle to get by earning an income of less than $17,000 a year. during your campaign, you will help to give them voice so they can demand better wages, dignity and respect. all workers have protections under the laws of this great

country, the united states of america we need to nurture the contributions of our workers so we can win the global race to out inovate our global competitors. that's why president obama will not let up on the fight for a more sane and humane 21st century immigration system. that means taking people from the shadows. giving them a place they can live a life. they can have a chance at the american dream. in that packet of immigration reform, we can't forget our

children. we need to work hard to help pass the dream act. . we have an opportunity to harness the talent of these students who love this country to offer a path of citizenship to those who serve in our military and excell in the classroom. they are in fact our future. i know that clear. i'm traveling around the country. i've heard some stories. please stand and be recognized.

how keepers that came see me yesterday. [applause] it breaks my heart earlier this year, we were reminded by the 100 anniversary where 146 people, mostly immigrant women and girls tragicily lost their lives. the trag yik left lessons we can all work from. i paid particular attention to three of them. we have to be vigilant for worker safety.

workers must have a right to organize and bargain collectively. that is a democratic principal. [applause] for the first time, they told us why. we heard from deanna, a child care worker in ohio. allison in new york and ernestine who works in a wal-mart. and liliana. these women have their voices

heard. after the trial, workers still need and want a voice at the table and at their jobs the fight now is a fight for our lifetime. something we can't forget.

foremen and women. those out of work. let us take it from our own families that have struggled. let us make that commitment here today together to get this country back on track. to do this for all america so that we can stand proudly against shine that hope on this proud planet we call home. please know we have an advocate and supporter that believes in everything you do. he is with you, this president, this administration. you can't forget that.

we need you now more than every. especially this crisis the fight is a big fight, it's one we have seen win because it happens not too long ago. i hope you all remain sted fast, ready and prepared for what is ahead. it's coming. hope is here for many of us. it is for me. it's been for the people i can see across this country. they have a voice. they are listening. keep your voices loud and clear. don't forget how needed your voices are this last year, i had

the privilege of time spending time on 40 acres in north california i'm reminded. he said above all what we need to remember is to respect all workers record negropontes of where they come from. what means they have or don't have but to always place them first. that's what kres ar chavez did, that is what we will continue to do. thank you so much yes, we can.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you again for your tremendous leadership on behalf of working americans. thank you again.

>> in his weekly address passing trade deals to help this place the republican address discusses the parts of proposal about the passage of a balanced budget amendment. >> both parties will have to work together on a larger plan to get our nation's finances in order. that's important. we have to make sure washington lives within its means just like families do.

>> our job has to be doing whatever we can to find work, where incomes are rising again for people. we have to increase the people. we need democrats and republicans to work together to help build this economy. we have to put politics aside.

there are a number of steps congress can work together. we need to extend tax cuts so you have more money in your paychecks next year. that extra money means businesses will have more customers and be in a better position to hire. wf a lot of honorable and skilled people returning from iraq and afghanistan. let's put them together. we have to cut red tape from quickly returning new ideas.

>> i'll keep calling on both parties in congress and sen these bills to my desk to sign them right away. both parties share power and responsibility for our progress it is our responsibility as americans that's the spirit we need right now.

that's how we'll get this going faster and reach a bright day. >> in this reminds me this is not the country we grew up in.

that's why the speaker told president obama we would not grant his request we wouldn't expect any tax increases which would enjoy our jobs. i voted for this legislation. is the approach that includes spending cuts larger than the debt hikes. no tax increases. it puts us on the track to increase debt confidence. still, this is no time for celebration. our debt is under control and our economy is back to creating

jobs again. there is a lot of work to be done. we'll work to reduce trillions of dollars. the house and senate will vote on the balanced budget amendment. to control spending over the long haul with a balanced budget amendment. we were right to hold the budget accountable on the debt limit. even more regulations. doubling down on the same failed policies is not the answer republicans have focussed on

implementing a strong growth and expands the american energy production. these are the kind to get the government out of the way. creating the best plan for american jobs. many are waiting on action from the democratic lead senate. you can review all the details of our plans at our website. we know we have all the tools and resources we need to grow our economy and rebuild this great nation. . .

smith, chairman of the foreign affairs subcommittee on africa, and civil-rights.

he would discuss how america is addressing the famine in somalia. the tension between sudan and the south sudan. newsmakers, sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. the buildup of a flow -- fluid inside of his skull can lead to death. it affects thousands of americans. a subcommittee heard about efforts to reduce deaths in new london and children. this is 90 minutes.

>> of the subcommittee will not come to order. i had the opportunity to learn more about this when i was traveling in africa last march. children that suffer from it, it is far -- their heads are far off the proportion to their bodies. superstition is still well it -- widespread. it is perceived as a curse or cause through witchcraft. a child may be killed or subjected to a terrific abuse as a result. it was a really -- a real eye opener for me to see and the extraordinary efforts of the courageous and passionate individuals addressing this. the human brain normally produces a cerebral and spinal fluid.

it removes waste away from the brain. it is drained away from the brain and absorption blood vessels as a new fluid. this condition occurs when the draining process does not function properly. the fluid levels inside the skull rise, causing increase pressure that could enlarge the head. symptoms include headaches, vomiting, blurred vision, cognitive difficulties come of brain damage, and ultimately death. it can occur in adults, but is most commonly present at birth. our witnesses will testify that there are believed to be more than four dozen cases in infants in uganda and thousands of new cases in sub-saharan africa at each year. by comparison in united states, it occurs in one out of every 500 births.

6000 children under the age of two develop it annually. u.s. national institutes of health estimated that 700,000 americans have hydrocephalus. it is the leading cause of brain surgery for children in this country. a major difference between the united states and sub-saharan africa and is the amount of neurosurgeons available to treat this condition. the united states has 3500 and neurosurgeons. you got the only has four. the number is about one for 10 million africans. there is a need for this important specialty. the methodology employed to treat hydrocephalus is important. doctors surgically inserted agent into the brain to drain

the fluid through the neck and other parts of the body, where it can be absorbed. a shunt is a temporary solution. many things can go wrong. it could become blocked and an infection could develop. catheter's can malfunction or the vowels may drain it to much or too little fluid. in half of all cases, shunts fail within the first two years. when they do, a patient must have immediate access to a medical facility and a doctor that can correct the problem. this must be a constant source of concern and the threat for the people in united states that suffer from this. a shunt is fundamentally impractical in africa. trained neurosurgeons are extremely few in africa as are properly equipped hospitals.

roads and a transportation systems on the african continent travel long for the vast majority of people even under the best circumstances. even someone that can be treated with a shunt has little hope for living longer than a few years. one of the four neurosurgeons in uganda, with the help of a video such as what we will be reviewing, he explains the fascinating surgical procedures that he is performing several times daily in you gotta to cure small children of hydrocephalus. this is being provided at a children's hospital in it you got there. it is serving to educate you

gunned and communities that the condition is not the result of a andan communities that the condition is not the result of a curse. infection is the chief cause of pediatric hydrocephalus in the developing country. a new surgical technique has been developed as well, which holds great promise for the children of africa and children in developmental -- in developing countries as well. hydrocephalus has never been a public health priority in developing countries. most infants in africa do not receive treatment. even when treated, they often succumb to premature deaths or have severe disabilities. they want to develop a public

prevention held strategy. many efforts are being undertaken to determine the causes of hydrocephalus and put an end to suffering caused by this life-threatening condition. all stakeholders that care about children in africa, should provide tangible support for these efforts and these initiatives. i would like to yield to my good colleague. >> i would like to think chairman smith for calling this hearing to shine a light on this horrible condition that we have heard described and that we will be discussing today. we certainly appreciate the experts who have given their time here today to enlighten us

on this situation. chairman smith has mentioned hydrocephalus as an excessive accumulation of the cerebrospinal fluid in the brain and can be congenital or acquired. congenital hydrocephalus may be caused by parental factors or genetic abnormalities, caused by infections, tumors, or head injuries. the disease can be fatal if left untreated. i hope that by providing prenatal care from others, can help prevent the infection that causes the disease. the prevalence rate is not well

documented or well known. there is an estimation that there are roughly 400,000 new cases in 2010. i believe the number of cases in east africa is to to neonatal infections. 5500 new cases occur each year. many in sub-saharan africa. the number at 1000 to 2000 new cases each year occur. roughly 60% of these are reportedly a trivet to neonatal -- neonatal infections. others are making an impact in

it you got there. it is clear that the innovative interventions are needed throughout africa. the resources available to combat this disease are lacking in africa and the developing world. in addition to the lack of funding and access to these facilities, -- there is one a neurosurgeon for every 10 million people in east africa and as has been noted, the number in you gotta -- uganda is one train certain per 8.6 million. it is a little bit better there than in other east african countries. if you take other countries in africa, it is even worse, because it is documented that there are no trains neurosurgeons in a number of countries in africa.

not one. we see that we have a very serious situation, where we have several positions for every 1000 people. we have won a neurosurgeon for every 88,000 people in america. one per 88,000 in the u.s. and one for 10 million or zero, we see why we have such a serious problem. in addition to the lack of the resource available, resources are severely lacking. in addition to the lack of a funding and access to help to combat the disease is rare with the lack of trained people to deal with this.

we want to hear from our experts today about how the global health initiative can best promote the training of specialized doctors and surgeons to combat this disease. i am interested in learning about what measures can be taken to prevent this disease altogether. we need to work on prevention. it will be difficult to get people in to treat and care. if we can deal with an overall prevention, i think our dollars will go much further and really keep a lot of agony from people's lives. i look forward to hearing witnesses in action and to the fact that we lack the training. i want to mention that i am cosponsoring a bill on higher education and advancement and

development. where we are trying to deal with higher education and in africa, whether it is basic education or teacher training as we see africa moving more towards universal, elementary education. some have decided that there is universal elementary free education. there are still school fees, but minimal. now that it has been recognized as an entity that should be included in secondary education, we see a move for girls in elementary education. hopefully we will see it in secondary education. i think we needed to try to move forward in assistance of higher

education, so that doctors and neurosurgeons, and people that we need to have positioned in africa, africans themselves, will have the training, so we can deal with this issue. thanks. >> we are joined by the chairman of the agencies. chairman of the appropriations committee. [unintelligible]

-- and dr. wharf established the only pediatric neurosurgery hospital in sub-saharan africa. he was the first to identify neonatal infections as the chief cause of pediatric hydrocephalus in a developing country. they are working to uncover this to conduct strategies. since returning to the u.s., he is looking at the role of it and continues to work in neurosurgery development. he was appointed director in neonatal surgery. he is a surgeon at harvard

medical school. we will hear from dr. stephen, a chair professor of engineering and director of the center for neural engineering. the pediatric neurosurgeon with an interest in ebola is a. he holds a ph.d. in theology and an m.b.a. from duke university. he is trained in adult and pediatric neurosurgery in -- neurosurgery. he may be the only fellow in the society of american college of surgeons and serves as someone who reviews physical letters. he has guided top positions in

surgeons. we will hear from james hill has served as a health care executive in the field since 1983. for 16 years, he served in the field and corporate administration with hospital networks. for the past dozen years, he has been part of a focused hospital and organizations. in 1997, he and his family moved to canyon to run the first cure hospital, the first of its kind on the continent. the creation of two and other facilities. turning state side, he continued to provide root a network of

hospitals, and had some programs. after completing his m.b.a. studies, he served as hospital administration for shriners of chicago and was elected board of directors. he continues to be a fellow with american college of healthcare executives. now as senior vice presidents, he provides executive leadership to help wide -- worldwide and hopefully cure hydrocephalus. >> thank you very much, chairman smith. members of the committee. it is a great honor to be here today. i appreciate the opportunity to testify about this devastating condition that affects millions of babies in africa and across development world. i am with children's hospital boston and an associate

professor at harvard medical school. from 2000-2006, my family and i lived as medical missionaries in uganda. we had a steady stream of mothers seeking treatment for their infants with hydrocephalus, a condition and in which the fluid is unable to circulate around the brain and not able to develop normally. it leads to damage to the developing brain and usually death if untreated. astonished by the volume -- we represented by questions. what are the chief causes disease in this part of the world? what was the best way to treat this general sub-saharan africa. we estimate that there are three

had a 75,000 new cases of infant hydrocephalus each year in sub- saharan africa. tens of billions of dollars defending on the economic analysis use. this burden is comparable to other common surgical conditions in africa such as malignancies, congenital anomalies, cataracts, and glaucoma. we are the first to highlight hydrocephalus as a serious halliburton in any region of the developing world. in the u.s., most is congenital or related to brain hemorrhage in premature babies. in marked contrast, 60% of the cases were caused by infection, mostly within the first months of life in the neonatal period. it is characterized by an

illness, accompanied by seizures, followed by rapid enlargement of the infant's head. in addition, the brains of these children contains pus, blood, and substantial obstruction of tissues. the vast majority of these children can be saved by treating hydrocephalus. but the primary brain injury of the initial infection is often devastating. we found that one-third of the children had died by five years and one-third of the survivors had severe disabilities. the importance of prevention or early treatment was obvious. we were able to isolate any bacteria, of the fluid from the surgical treatment. this is where my viable colleague and his team from penn state had come to the rescue as he will give testimony.

>> infant hydrocephalus is almost always treated by implanting a in the drains the fluid from the brain into the abdomen. the average patient in the u.s. requires three operations for this. shut failures is a life- threatening emergency in children. in rural africa, it is impossible to have emergency care. we try to treat hydrocephalus by using a scope to avoid shunt dependents in most of these babies. the operation makes a new pathway for the fluid to escape the spaces in the brain and cauterizes the tissue that makes the fluid, thus decreasing its rate of production. we have since learned to predict which patients are most likely to be treated successfully in this way and have trained and equipped other surgeons in the technique, which will be demonstrated shortly in a brief video.

detailed economic analysis estimates the lifetime treatment costs of around $90 per disability adjusted life year averted, using the treatment. time we developed. and this is very favorable to the other surgical interventions that have been studied in developing countries. hydrocephalus has never been a public health priority in a developing country. most infants in africa received no treatment. training and equipping centers are essential. it is imperative that we identify the causes of infection in these babies, so that public health strategies for prevention can be constructed and millions of lives saved. these are the challenges that lie before us. thanks very much. we have a video that i would like to show.

the man you will hear talking is a neurosurgeon in uganda hoot i trained with the technique and work with me before i went back to the u.s. >> the biggest problem is that -- and they think the problem comes from witchcraft to god's curses. the manifestations may range from developmentally, visual impairment, and ultimately they do die if they are not treated. i get a joint from treating children. when i get a small here or see a parent plane, i feel joy. >> this is a scene in our

operating room in uganda that takes up about a minute or so to demonstrate the setup in the operating theater. there is the doctor making the small incision in the infant's scalp, just over the soft spot. in a few moments, he will insert a small, in the scope into the cavity in the brain. you will see as i will point out, where he makes the opening to allow the fluid to escape. that is a view from inside the brain. the left side is where the pituitary gland is. to the right is the brain stem. he is making an opening in the third ventricle with the fluid is trapped. now the fluid will be able to

exit this new opening, which bypasses levels of obstruction and allows the fluid to escape outside of the brain into the spaces where it can normally circulate and be absorbed. this part of the procedure is where the tissue is being cauterized, the tissue that makes the spinal fluid. in infants, the success rate was greatly increased by addition of this procedure at the time of the surgery. the innovation was combining the two techniques, which had not been tried before. thanks very much. >> thank you very much. doctor? >> thank you very much for the opportunity to testify today. i am a pediatric neurosurgeon and started at the children's hospital here in washington, d.c..

i direct the center for engineering at penn state university, seeking for solutions that intersect the problem between medical engineering and science. i have known dr. war for many years. i visited him in 2006 to see how our regency tower in our critics see how our engineering center could help. they were inundated with cases. at that time, they had treated over 1000 patients without being able to culture any of the courses of organisms in their laboratory. i asked him what the most important problem was that he faced at the hospital. he said, finding out what causes these cases. i have devoted much of my professional effort in seeking those interests. we brought specimens from

ugandan immigrants back to penn state and a look at them in terms of advanced ways of growing organisms. we grew nothing. we turned to collection tools that police used at crime scenes and a set up a forensics lab at the hospital. we gather the dna from the brain fluids at the the time of surgery to seek bacterial genes that might be present in the infants during surgery. i found evidence of bacteria in the brain fluid in nearly every one of these children. the bacterial types were consistent with those found on a farm with animals. the spectrum was noted to change with various seasons, and the rainy season in uganda. the most prevalent one is a notorious organism that has caused terrible wound infections in military personnel in the iraq and afghanistan conflict.

we undertook field work to track down the infants' wear a refund of this type of infection. environmental samples from huts, done that, and water supply it did close genetic matches for the organisms that we had previously retrieved from the brains of the infants. our findings were significant, but did not determine what initially made the implants sick. los of them developed serious infections and then the first month of life. the world health organization said infections lead to the deaths of 1.6 million newborn infants each year. the majority in sub-saharan africa and southern asia. because of bacteria appeared to be different from those we see in the u.s.. most of the culture results have a failed to go out organisms in

any laboratory. we began a study last year at one of the major referral hospitals in uganda. we recruited 80 mother-infant appears in a partnership with their head pediatrician collecting spinal fluid and blood from the babies and birth canal specimens from the mother. we are collaborating with an institute near washington, d.c. to perform an exhaustive seek listing of the viral and bacterial content of the samples. once we steady the sufficient number of patients, we will know which infections lead to hydrocephalus treated at the cure hospital. recently, by using his case of data with u.s. noah satellite

data, we identified a strong link between climate and post infectious hydrocephalus. infants get sick at intermediate levels of rainfall. we are looking at the role of the environment in this condition. we are benefiting from united states technology in ways we had never anticipated. we are committed to optimally surgically treating the large numbers of children who have hydrocephalus. we will never operate our way out of this problem. a critical long-term goal is more effective treatment of children to decrease the brain complications in the survivors and most important, once we understand the root causes, we need public health measures to prevent these infections. this is a global health issue well below the specifics raised

by small african hospitals in great u.s. charitable organizations to bring the highest quality of medical care and compassion to children around the world. of 130 million children born around the world each year, we are inadequately addressing the million and they have to die of preventable newborn infection. as a physician and a scientist and a father, i am struck by how much we do not know about a newborn infections in developing countries. i am concerned that one reason is that the newborn infants that died there had no political voice. i will offer three conclusions in closing. . we have not paid sufficient attention to the mass of human loss in developing world. we now have the technology to shed new light on the causes of

the substantial fraction of these debts. we can develop sustainable strategies and technologies to more effectively prevent the deaths and tragic survivals from these devastating illnesses. the saving of millions of lives depend on our actions. thank you. >> it things. >> members of the committee, thanks for inviting me to discuss the problem of hydrocephalus in the developing world and what cure international is doing to help children suffering from this devastating condition. it is an honor to be here with these doctors that have contributed enormously to the understanding of these conditions and enormous techniques to make possible the killing of infants in the world countries. 15 years ago, i opened and ran a

hospital for a number of years in kenya. i now serve as a senior vice president of specialty programs for cure international, an american based nonprofit organization. our mission is to heal disabled children. we offer help in afghanistan and across the developing world. hydrocephalus is perhaps our most ambitious and innovative initiative. the unique work at uganda is the endoscopic treatment of children with it is at this. that condition is commonly known as water on the brain, which can be prevented at birth or cost later by infection. the initiative was born at sure you get a hospital because of the work of dr. wharf and his tenure as medical director there. he also trained the current medical director and over a

dozen other surgeons from developing world arenas. in more than 650 surgical procedures are performed annually at this hospital to treat hydrocephalus. more than any other hospital in the world. in 2010, more than four dozen new cop -- cases occurred in the nearly 3000 in developing world using a ratio of 3 per 1000 births. virtually all of these children, if left untreated, die. over the next five years, as many as 1.5 million in the developing world could die from hydrocephalus. the majority of these cases treated at our hospitals, have two surgical procedures described by dr. ward. the technique is a cure for children suffering from

hydrocephalus, as it eliminates the need for a shunt in the brain. this standard treatments, which can and need a replacement two or three times, up to five times over a child lifetime. this is a huge logistical and economical challenge in developing worlds like uganda. too many children are never treated and die. their families are unable to access further medical care should there shut failed. hydrocephalus is a global concern that is widespread in poor countries and vastly underreported. with new techniques, we have the opportunity to save thousands of children and into the suffering of their family. what is needed is the scale up of treatment by increasing training of national servants in creating the proper infrastructure to support ongoing work.

there are four trained neurosurgeons in uganda. 33.6 million people there. one neurosurgeon for every 10 million people in east africa. the united states, we have 3500 board certified neurosurgeons. we have 110 * the access to treatment than that of the people living in east africa. other efforts to address this problem are some up in four initiatives that make up your hydrocephalus. stranding national substance -- systems by training national surgeons in the developing world in advanced treatment methods for high persepolis. second, enabling those surgeons to use their skills by providing them the appropriate operating equipment. developing the structure to capture of patient care data to facilitate research with our partners to understand the

causes and best practices and the effective methods of prevention opposed infection hydrocephalus. demonstrating compassionate care and concern for the world's most volatile children into their parents and their families by ongoing follow-up. training, treatment, research and prevention and compassionate care will change how hard persepolis is treated. it will translate into significant cost savings for fragile developing health systems. mr. chairman, thanks for your personal interest in this life- threatening medical condition injured leadership in establishing creative and innovative ways to save more lives and in the suffering of many thousands of children. my colleagues and i are excited and confident in going forward as we are called upon to do so.

this may have already been handled, but i do have a document to submit as part of the record. >> without objection, it will be part of the record. and anything that our three distinguished witnesses would like to add. >> thanks for your testimony. thank you, gentlemen. let me begin with opening questions. it needs to be shot from the rooftops hydrocephalus is a preventable tragedy and the solutions that you have pioneered and it doesn't sell for over a decade remain the best kept secret in washington. there are many people that have working health issues, that i have raised and handed out some of the materials you have a provided to our office. they were shocked and had no idea the prevalence of the new

cases per year. no idea that there is an ongoing and very effective solution that you are employing every day. you need more people and resources to expand the solution. we thank you for the humanitarian work you have done. it is extraordinary. describe the life of a child with hydrocephalus as the pressure builds, the pain that they experience. what is the ultimate consequence if untraded? >> as the fluid is trapped in the spaces in the pain, and as

the brain continues to make an ounce every hour, the head begins to expand, sometimes too enormous sizes. the soft spot on the baby's head begin to bowled along with the danes. it is deviated downward in a sense that son. the children become listless. they speak poorly. they are irritable. they are in pain. they've vomit. about half of them will be dead by the age of two. the other half will be severely devastated. sometimes it can accommodate or spontaneously arrest themselves. that is why sometimes they survive. they all virtually died or are badly disabled. it is a treatable condition.

if hydrocephalus is the only problem, and you treat it early, those children can be quite normal. in a case where it is a secondary to another event, such as and infection or hemorrhage, there are sometimes varying degrees of brain injury. children that are shut dependent, even in developed countries, in our own practices here in the u.s., are fortunate to have access to a safety net, so that when there shunt a malfunction, they almost always have emergency access to nearer surgical care, and we fix those 2:00 in the morning or whatever it takes, because if is an emergency. one of the things that drove me to look for other solutions and

push the envelope was knowing that when i put a shunt in one of these children, and they went back, that when it failed later in their lives, when the soft spots in the skull had closed up, they would almost certainly die, before they can find their way to a hospital before anybody can do anything about it. >> to have you talk about the discovery of the -- the most prevalent bacteria, that has caused deaths in wound infections to military personnel in iraq and afghanistan. is that the only one bugs or infections? and you had someone in africa. he said something based on the

work you have done, the use of cow dung, to cauterize the umbilical cord after birth. is that one way these children are contracting hydrocephalus, infection born? whether or not the ministries of health have shown any interest in better birthing practices to mitigate the passage of this terrible infection? >> i hope that in a few years, we can come back and be very clear that we truly have worked all of these mysteries out. a great deal of evidence, and related organisms, in the brains of these children, but does not

tell us what caused the initial devastating infection that may often have destroyed a great deal of brain, and leaving them in a devastated the state. we are conducting several different clinical trials trying to untangle this. we are comparing children with hydrocephalus, who have a history of serious newport infections, with those that do not. it is possible -- we brush our teeth, shower our bodies, with bacteria. it may be that these are having in our mental bacteria that they encounter as newborn infants. who it is an eye opener for one of us to go to this and understand the conditions of

newborn infants and what they need to survive. the huts are lined with the done the, purposely. it is a good insulator from rain and keeps out can't. vegetation ande helps.n thung a which is tremendous exposure in addition to cultural practices of using dung on , umbilical stunt. impends are exposed to a great deal of this. we need to nail down what causes the very common scenario that a doctor were mentioned. not just high fevers and a serious infection, but almost all of these children have had epileptic seizures to go along with it. we have what appears to be

organisms that have a predilection to get into the brain. are they bacteria or viruses? one of more early in life, that opens one up. they are able to show you what they are exposed to in the environment. we can sequence it from the cure hospital. it is an example of the kind of complexity. and of being able to work all of this out now, is straight forward. we have the ability to go back, find the fragments of the organisms, and i think one of the challenges will be, how do we bring this to the next country? major science institute's center united states and running the extent of secrecy on every side in the developing world.

i think in the coming years, being able to understand how to go into another country, africa, or asia, and others seem to have many of these cases, learn how to uncover the organisms, keep surveillance, so that we can do two things. learn how to better treated the infants when they are sick, and be able to institute rational public health strategies to cut down the numbers of these infections. thanks. >> they seek to drastically reduce the number of children that die. has a unicef and other agencies that deal with health issues, including usa i d, the european

union, and their house -- held initiatives -- have they addressed the hydrocephalus epidemic that is occurring, which is preventable and very treatable if you stop the infection is in the first place? you have a solution if children do get sick. are they addressing this? >> to my knowledge, no sir. there is an overwhelming problem. i think hydrocephalus has been below the radar screen. i recently attended the world health organization. their report on disability. many things were mentioned. the infection of the children was not among the things that were talked about in the port. i think it is something that

needs to be brought to the attention of the kinds of bodies that are able to find work in this area. >> i think you are doing an enormous service for those children and their families. have the gates foundation or the one campaign or the other notable charities, have they joined in? >> and not yet. with regards to the cbc, what is the acceptance of that domestically in? can you prepare the costs of shut intervention to that which you have affected and created. >> etv has been done for quite

some time. it was not very successful in babies under a year of age. it was rarely done and still is not done that often. they try to avoid shut the pennants in babies from the very beginning. we added an old idea, which had been practiced a number of years ago, before shunts were an idea on how to treat hydrocephalus. it is to reduce the tissue that makes the fluid. it has been largely abandoned. it was not affected itself. the idea of combining the two procedures was to address the obstruction problems, bypassing the fluid, and allowing an exit for the fluid out of the brain.

and some call a committee kenning hydrocephalus, which is left over in some babies, they cannot handle the fluid, absorbing it once it gets out. by reducing the issue somewhat and the rate of production, we found that there is a significant increase success rate with the etv. there is a growing success -- acceptance of this in the u.s.. there are others that have begun to use the technique. i think the main shift in culture has been a shift away from simply placing a shunt in a baby to thinking that could this be avoided by a more sophisticated technique that takes a different skills. it is well worth doing.

for instance, a common cause of high for such laws in the u.s. is associated with the spina bifida. about two-thirds of those children have hydrocephalus that needs to be treated. they were treated with shunts up until fairly recently. etv ve found that theet combined with another procedure is successful 75% of the time. we are matching those same success rate in the u.s.. there is a growing interest in that, especially in the spina bifida community. it is a matter of practice change. those things can happen fairly slowly. >> you talk about how the data and satellite data showed beer

is a correlation between environment and i am other factors. why is that? >> we do not know for sure yet. it is very substantial. it points to an environmental component of this, which we will need to understand, and then take into account, to know how to rationally reduce the numbers of infection. there are other serious infections in the world, with this type of rainfall a wink, that has been shown. the most famous is a terrible skin infection in southeast asia and northern australia. the bacteria is so nasty id is on our select agent list. in speaking with the doctors that worked that out, they had to learn how the soil,

temperature and the soil moisture allowed the bacteria to get to the surface at certain times of the year and infect people directly. those are the kinds of things that if we need to do that here, it is straight forward and will give us the answers to design good preventive medicines. >> is the cdc working with this? this could potentially reduce the number of children dealing with hydrocephalus and? >> these are relatively new findings. we will be in the process of raising what we needed to get to the bottom of this. >> thanks very much. i appreciate your testimony and on this question of water, water borne diseases, even though it is kind of off the specific

topic here, in your opinion, how much preventable diseases are actually caused by in pure water, waterborne diseases? diarrhea -- diseases in general, especially for newborns and infants and children -- in your opinion, investment in clean water, would that probably be one of the greatest preventive methods to preventing many childhood diseases and in particular what you are talking about? you are talking about rainfall, which is a little bit different. the question of water and things of that nature -- would you like

to tackle that? >> there is nothing i have seen more shocking in my work than unprotected wells in rural villages in africa and what people need to drink. the availability of the portable drinking water that is safe, is an enormous factor in public health around the world. i thought this was going to be the likely answer, but we see these cases in villages with excellence. a very good water supply and villages with terrible water supplies. there may not be an important role of water supplies in this. the dancers will be straightforward if that is what we will find.

everything else in this story may be more complicated than we had hoped. >> thanks. though it is not well- documented, the developing world has a significant higher prevalence rate of hydrocephalus than the developed world.

american public. this is an hour and a half. >> good afternoon, everyone, and thank you or being with us on this afternoon in washington, d.c. after we have had a lot of really interesting times over the past two months. it's great to have you with us. - christine mcentee of the geophysical union and i'd like to thank the american meteorological society and aerospace for working with us on bringing to you what we think is

a really, really distinguished panel and also some really important information to convey to everyone here. even though it's typically out of sight and out of mind, americans across the country rely on polar orbiting satellite systems more than menino. in adition to the impact on everything from agriculture to aviation safety to the oil and gas industry, the satellites facilitate ur ability to issue timely and accurate warnings during other events like tornadoes and hurricanes. and this certainly has been a really interesting weather year for the united states. the three to five dss warnings we are able to give when severe weather strikes depends on the data from the polar orbiting satellites and other things at which are used to interpret this data which you will hear about from our panel. we saw how beneficial as a country these advanced warnings can beearlier this year when tornadoes swept through the southern u.s. and in joplin misery.

all weather forecasting systems rely on the data provided by noaa and the national weather service and the polar satellite provide 90 present of the data that is used in weather service forecast models. maintaining reliable data mandates is that we maintain our polar orbiting satellite system including the next jpss -- excuse me for a minute. the next generation system which as many of you w the joint polar satellite system or jpss. each year as weather is the direct cause of thousands of deaths of injuries and billions of dollars in damage today we are going to discuss how these satellites ptect not only public safety but they also protect national security and our economy. i'm going to introduce the panel and then turn it over to dr. berrien moore who's the director as well as the

chesapeake energy corporation chair and climate study for the university of oklahoma school of meteorology and the dean of the denver city college fought mustered in the geographic study and vice president of the schools weather and climate programs, and he will begin to moderate the panel as soon as i introduce them to you. with us today in addition to dr. moore, we have dr. 9-1-1 sullivan as you know the assistant secretary of commerce for environmental observation and production and deputy head minister of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. jim stefkovich, as a meteorologist in charge of the national weather service in birmingham alabama, blah, blah and, a wjla meteorologist. the climate communications person who's getting his doctorate at george mason university, working on his

doctorate -- at george mason university here in the washington, d.c. area, and edward eddie hicks was the emergency management director in morgan county alabama and president of the u.s. council of the international association of emergency managers. and with that i am going to turn it over to berrien. >> thank you. appreciate th. >> i >> thank you. appreciate that. >> i am delighted to be here. as you can tell from the introduction of the panel we are going to range from noaa's role on the observation that forecast to the role of the forecaster and then to the role of what do people do with the information. so having eddie hicks here to be

able to tell us what it's like to be at ground zero is a particular important part of this panel. i had some experience with that this past year in norman oklahoma. as the director of the national weather center this was my first year and my first day on the job if you will in tornado season. in fact that almost indicates my east coast bias that i hadnever really been in a tornado alley, and so the white had joined the university in june in 2010 my first spring in normandy and on may 24 for kavanagh and others from the production center and the national laboratory called

me at 8:30 and said the models are converging and we need to brief the vice president that between 5:30 and 6:30 on the i35 corridor 20 miles south to 20 miles north of oklahoma city we are going to have severe tornado conditions. this is 8:30 morning. spinning there wasn't a cloud in the sky. the golf course was crowded the students left for the summer, people were taking picnics, it was a beautiful springtime day and norman oklahoma. the governor was called we waited for the mid morning past of the polar satellite, the models continue to converge and the data was being integrated but there was no need at this stage to bring in the radar data

because it is a crystal clear day and the pooler afternoon platform led by regarding the data the network started to ck in. so these models are now beginning to assimilate different datasets. at 3:00 the government sets the state down. there wasn't a cloud in the sky. on i called over to the golf course to brief the professor and said yes we already know about that but we feel like we can get people off the course in the next hour. 4 o'clock in the afternoon a few clouds began to appear in the sky. at 5:15, we began to have to evacuate the second floor in safe areas aving open only the forecast office because by this time we were now beginning to see the radar take in.

at 5:48 tornadoes touches down north of oklahoma city and the corridor. another tornado touch is done between oklahoma city and normandy and the third tornado 2 miles south of campus touches down about 6:45. 7:00 we get the all clear. i walk out side and not a cloud in the sky. i thought i had never seen science quite like this, to see the observation of computing scientific systems say something at 9:00 in the morning, 5:30 and six time kofi that we were going to have severe conditions. the bp for the research and meteorologist was a little disappointed that the third would kicking in at 6:45 and we would miss the forecast. now this is extraordinary for the country to have this kind of capability to actually go

through that sequence and what are the elements of that sequence and then how do we communicate the information is something we need to do not only today but a number of times this next year. so, my first question is to dr. sullivan, and that is tell us what noaa does in all of this and tell us what is the state of the system right now in all of this. >> thanks. who can say it better than that first-pson account. and by the way, i'd like to say for the members of all the stuff here i can't tell you how fun it is to be in the chamber and speaking to people without a five minute timer in front of me. laughter could it's absolutely extraordinary.w we are facing a differentwwww direction. that doesn't hurt. so i wasin kansas city arriving

in kansas city on the day berrien just told you about. i was on route to a couple places on was to kansas city to visit our central region forecast office which is the central control and coordinating authority for all of the weather forecast offices that had just been experiencing and preparing people for what berrien described and about ten days earlier had been serving in similar role as tornadoes last for joplin missouri, quite a devastating in that community 115i believe the final count was lives lost, thousands of structures at 1800-acre fields that is to be people's homes and hospitals. it was quite an experience and in fact the day that we were driving from kansas city down to springfield and the joplin area tornadoes were running through the southeastern part of kansas city and we were relying on the same forecast skills, the san chain berrien described to th models, the expert forecasters

to provide the guidance and in the media from the apple on our iphone to the radio and television to get the word out that last mile so that we all know not just with the models say because we don't care what the models say. what we care about is what is about to happen in your neighborhood. and how can i explain that to you in a way that says you know henry lee right where you are, not in the county generally, but along the ice 35 corridor plus or minus a few miles. so you can add that into your sens of where you are very readily and determine what actions to take. we got off the highway. we were looking at all the information to the radiologists and the lot better geologists in the car looking at all the data looking atll the sources, the highway is the worst place to be we got off the highway. we said let's at least start with a large structure like a restaurant. we've walked in and it was an

apple these -- applebees. she says we are serving, we have the freezers, we are not seeing anybody by the window, we know the drill and we are paying attention, too. the restaurant is relying on the same information to be sure they make the right decision can we continue to serve customers or not. when we have to take the business loss and do the right thing and in that window because we do have large firms structures like freezers, how can we help structure people, they, are there, they are already at that point. people survived in joplin taking refuge in freezers and large food freezers and restaurants and stores. i'm sure the same is true of alabama. so, you know, i would like to amplify again that ain and may be introduce a metaphor that is anchored on when end and absolutely remarkable and

berrien user right adjectives the concrete salles whitcomb blight foundation of expertise come observational to the the the the advanced modeling capability that the united states owns and operates as a fedel public good platform. this is not what the weather channel does, this is not what kgla does, this is what we, as a nation, do, to ensure that for all citizens with the technical and expertise foundation that lets this sort of observation transform to knowledge, transform to information that matters and move in a timely fashion in a channel that clicks with who you are and where you are so that you can take the right action to protect yourself, your business, your home, your family and connects the folks like eddie hicks here so that they can help put the word out and prepare first responders. and that's the one of the link to this change that i would

alert you to. berrien told a story putting people out of harm's way in the precautionary sense, get people out of the way in advance. at the same time that that word was reaching him, because he happens to live in a very -- one of the nation's best meteorology departments, our central region and local forecast offices are activating circuits and relationships they work on an everyday basis to keep in good touch. they are calling emergency managers, they are tied into fema and red coss. bigger telling those first responders the same thing, too, so they can run through the prepared this checklist and think where the command post structures are and the stocks and stores. the probability of the hits are going and what supply chains, retailers from wal-mart and other vendors can the alert we may need your help in this corridor over the next couple of days if they really hit, so think about being on the ground after the storm winds through and in a footprint where it did

touch ground. the place i don't want to be. think about being that person coming out of that restaurant freezer or out of your cellar to the blue sky and the fix that used to be your home. thanks again to the chance to believe and communication, the people who are losing out to respond to you knew in advance, was staged in advance has been on their tiptoes ready to advance. we can't make what has happened to those decisions go away, but we certainly can bring the response in to play hours if not das faster. we can think of other natural disasters sometimes in this country, sometimes overseas, in that window of time from eight hits and has passed from finally someone is here to help me and it has been measured in days if not weeks, the potential for disease goes up, casualty numbers go up as people suffer more severe consequences of early injuries.

we have some remarkable ability in this country to confine and lesson that cascade with further cascading consequences. so what does noaa do? noaa is the agency that has been charged with that federal foundation responsibility. we are charged with operating satellites and polar orbits that deutsch scans are around the planet and the planet rotates underneath. we work in partnership with the defense department and the egg ropean meteorological. he mentioned the pass and the impleader sellite path. there was a european satellite and in the morning it was the noaa and in the afternoon that is the kind of international collaboration on the observations characterized in the enterprise if i may use that term for more than a century. the united states makes myriad measurements from satellites and other systems every day multiple times a day. characterizes the atmosphere and weather patterns over our country. satellites of course are

indispensable for many reasons including the upstream areas over the pacific ocean that are going to become the united states three, four, five days on the road. they make vertical profiles of the key atmospheric constituents that are the essential ingredients in the models. we share that data freely and with the media of local services of every other country on the plan that really a simple reason. we absolutely also have to have their data to feed our models and the cost of trying to inspire the to implement the world to the scale that we need to do with your forcasting has prohibited. it is a remarkable partnership that the data exchanges have endured through times of hostility, for times of open warfare where the data has still been exchange. as we operate the stellites. i will come back to the constellation and the moment and the stationary satellite as well. we installed and operate the

fundamental backbone radar network of about 88 sites across the united states and for the trust territories. we are on certain other targeted more local scale instrument networks partly for smaller scale measurements to help characterize how the pattern is scaled down to regions and partly for the research to improve operations. we also around the national centers for the environmental protection and the storm prediction center which is located with the weather center is one of those centers. the tropical prediction center which you know was the national hurricane ceer is another one. so some focus centers the work of developing the expertise and the modeling capability to get comfortable lead potent forecasts for different weather phenomena. out of all of that infrastructure the super computers that run the models and the forecasters at process and produce the outlook guidance, that outlook guidance

produce the certified if you will national forecast data that is put out an abundance of the information products. we have called thm the family of services. anybody coming you can come to the web site and find and pick up any of those products yourself if you would like. but what we all do more commonly is that an application on our iphone or have favored meteorologist or some other source that fills the gap for us and those the extra translation. noaa doesn't try to transmit the products all the way into the kind of format you get them for your personal use we turn to our partners in the private-sector to do that and rely on them tremendously to make sure the ground is saturated and covered and a free betty, every one possible has heard about it. i would say to other things on that point and then i am sure my five minutes are up. [laughter] one is if you ever har -- if

you ever hear these phrases, they have absolutely positively by mutual agreement with our private sector partners as well as national mandates the have come only from noaa. if you ever hear special with her statements that is a sort of good housekeeping seal of approval that tells you national forecasters looking at the public safety and economic benefit has escalated tension around the other circumstances. if you ever hear watch or warning, those are only -- that is only your country warning you and alerting you heads up something might be in your area or something is in your area and you need to be acting now to protect your business and your life and your home and our partners in the private sector helped pass that on to all of you. >> one other small questi and then i want to go to the other part of the panel. we all have just come through another severe weather event, úd and that's the budget, and i waú

wondering in this severe weather have we come out of the storm ú shelter yet, and what we look@ around when we see what the@@ ptatus of your system in terms0@ of both the geostationarydú satellite and the l earthp orbit satellite as well a the other observation systems, howñ are we in that situation? >> i am in peeking out from the storm shelter but not entirely convinced yet to leave. so, with respect to th satellite constellions as happens with both the polar and the jeal satellite series at points in a milestone where there are new satellites in the design of the pertinent process to get up on the order in the 2015 from 16 come7 timeframe the target always has been to be to have the satellite ready on station to take over from the one that has been in place to not have a feel we're on the

order that leaves you with a gap in the data streams that we have been talking about, so for the polar satellites, we have a satellite that is built close to ready to go in colorado at the air base by the name of npp and our target is to get off the ground in october of this year for the five-year life of a ticket for 2016. the joint polar satellite that was mentioned has been queued up to be the successor and takes the baton from npp in the 2016 timeframe. the current year fiscally 11 funding challenges with budgets that didn't reach federal agencies until the fourth arter shorted the budget required to the procurement with gps s by a very substantial amount that was requested was just over a billion dollars, 1.07 billion, the satellite happens to be that point you have to step up into actually building things. the nuber refers, it came out

on the appropriation was 382 million, quite the gap. the administration and others realize and the severity of the gap we worked together over a number of months and managed to move that north to 471 million. nonetheless, that our best estimates now say that has moved the on or bet rate in the state buy something on the order of a year and raises a very real risk almost a certainty that there will be a gap in the data for the afternoon or bit. the european union, a unit that has continuing to work to sustain the warning orbit we might have a gap, we might not get that second look at berrien mentioned for a period of about a year. we don't know the budget for the next fiscal year fy 12 yet. our proposals have been marked up by the house. we again came asking for the amount we need, 1,000,000,000.6. the house market was close to

that in th900 million range. we don't know yet what the final outcome will be in the senate awaiting their number and of course, the outlook for 13 is certainly ase are hearing at any rate the outlook is nobody's budget is likely to go up but staying flat will be some degree of a victory. as of the challenge here is for noaa although this is not the noaa alone problem how we deal with being at a critical juncture for these absolute critical satellite observing systems the jeal system is coming along as well. how to be a comedy that, how do we get that done? within the constrain that the agencies are looking at? on the radar site i will qickly add the next system is in pretty good shape. our scientific cadre that keeps impving our ability to extract information from it is pressured by these budgets and really

spectacular advances, technical advances in the radar system that are just at hand, the ability to step into those and go to the dual polarization and stolid radars i think those prospective advances, which others at this table can tell you really would revolutionize the short term accuracy with things like tornadoes. that is certainly threatened by these budget pressures. >> okay. let me shift now to three of our forecasters, and i would like them to just take the general topic of a forecast, and in particular dhaka brian and jim and joe it's been my experience and maybe this is a game, the fact that i have not been in the area necessary lee sevier whether, i don't remember as often where the forecast was that one day in and today's out, but i guess that in the area

where these are real issues, the one and today out forecast is a reality. i would like to talk about that as well as the in how do you shi over to when it becomes now we are in the warning phase, out of the watch phase. at the 30 minutes and the 45 minute stages. talk to us a little about your role and what your response of the czar and when you are looking at. maybe start with bob. >> on the chain and the continuity, and it gives me an portunity not to necessarily do it myself, but to give a little bit of a history, my synoptic professor and the synoptics are the basis of the forecasting, was one of the great pioneers from the school of meteorology that began with rossby, and before i got into

this side of the business from the opportunity to be in the research for a while i met a man who was one of the great hour original fundamental driving forces behind the miracle of weather forecasting, rather than using analytical techniques and with the art form is, and i've been fortunate to know people like that who are one of the great pioneers in the radar meteorology. and ourse byrne who was one of the great pioneers between satellite meteorology. so what has been for me exciting to start looking at years ago the beer truck model that jardine was used as the first model process, and to see the evolution and to see the tremendous advance and application of the science that i started laughing as a ten year old boy that loves snowstorms,

and here we are today. so, i tnk the application and the utility across the science itself from everything from the short term life critical decision making to the longer term planning economically and for two to three to four it is out and to see that being accepted across every sector of the united states and worldwide and what we do has a surface and as perhaps a fundamental service of government, that is the protection of life and property, that is the weather community has been so satisfying to me to see coming and as i have grwn into this and then to be able to now be a part of that community that we all share, that is how do wehelp people one, understand what will be happening and then how do we help them make the best decision. whether it is the one hour with

a two hour and ten minute decision or the decision for three or four weeks ahead of time, as now people in oklahoma arehaving to deal with ever more economically and personally challenging things from heat waves. so by that as a little background, what we have seen is the fundamental application of so many parts of the science. that is the data which is so critical, and rick anthony used the analogy of what we do as a three leggitt school. the data from their remote sensing, the satellites that are now all 5-years-old whenwe first began to where we are now, those data, the fundamental understanding of the meteorology what is going on, and the use of the computer systems such as the great pioneers of snider and cno charlie had so that the medical forecasting has indeed now

advanced to the way we do business. it is no longer an art form, it is a science that benefits everybody in every sector and in every part of the country, an the service that we render as the nation to the world for that matter with cooperation and the sharing of data. so it has been a continuity if you will, and the continuity that must continue. sometimes i think we lose sight of how rapidly we have arrived at the point we are now in the application of the science and where we have yet to go. the forecasting proem is not solved, and we cannot lose sight that we need to maintain and devotee of its those critical, critical elements, be they ever more powerful computers, be they the continuy and the maintenance of the critical

satellite data, be they the education of all of us or be faith in the use of all of the new communication tools that we now have at our disposal from our public and private partnerships to the emergency managers so that indeed people can make the right decisions. so, seeing that and then maintaining it and continuing at is at the core of the government should do. so i don't think we can lose sight of the risk that there is this perception. we have solved the forecasting problem. let's move on to the next. the forecasting problem is not solved. we can only have a chance, and as we can see to get that tornado warning 30 minutes out, one hour out down to specific neighborhoods have people make again the right decision. advance so that we an, ten days ahead of time, begin to have some planning for a hurricane or

for an economically devastating and changing what people do for winter storms. and this is the economic payoff, and the economic benefit to the country to the individual is huge in terms of cost benefit, and again, this government, and we are all part of that, then the citizens i never heard someone come up to me and say you know what, we are paying too much for our weather services. i don't think i'm getting m money's worth as a tax payer. they have never said that. so, it's been a very exciting career that life had come and gratifying to see one, cooperation that exists across all sectors. but importantly, the afghans and where we've come from from those early beginnings and the advance and acceptance of our science by so many decision makers in the

public that the then take what we say and believe it and take e action. but the job is not over. we have to as a community make sure that we maintain this and don't have any gaps that are -- the public if they hear that there is a gap coming up that's going too deteriorated and have a regression, they would say what the heck is going on? that something that's important to me. so we are all in the same boat together. >> pick up on that a little bit from us and then i would like to go to jim to tell us from the alabama perspective and particularly the relationship that you and eddie have had but i would like to go to joe first. from your experience, but things stand out in your mind as a forecaster and the role of the forecaster. >> - cui are all on the

steamboat. in fact i can remember back in seattle, 1970i just started out in tv. we would go down the national??? weather service office and take? a four by five polaroid???????? black-and-white image of what??? was happening from clouds and??? looking down on the clouds over? the pacific. we have little data???? coming ? the pacific a few ships here and there and so for us it was pretty fuzzy at the same time and our technology has grown so quickly and so fast things to the wonderful scientific world we have in this country. remember when we thought getting a better forecast by telephone was so cool like it filed a number to get weather forecast try that with and a tornado approaching it just wouldn't work and then we had a mobile phones come along and could get

the weather on the mobile phones and now where are we? we are now with the iphone and the technology of the iphone you can go to bob's website and i can see the every are right here and i can see the satellite technology and the doppler radar technology so if we come this far that short period of time what can science do for us in the short term near future it's been to the explosion of technology, knowledge in the computer power that we will be able to do much better when it comes to warnings ahead of time, specifically for tornadoes. we show the doppler radar without the doppler radar us tv folks would be much in the dark. doppler radar has done so much for us we still have a challenge trying to figure out what is snow and rain and where is that line that is always a challenge but with the new sensors in the

near future with many more channels of information coming and we will be able to decipher much better what are those particles or those water droplets are they high clouds or low clouds or mid-level clouds? and so the expansion of the capability that we have and that is one thing that i havlearned being around the scientists at the campus was that knowledge base that is building and especially with the younger people coming out nd it's in a way theway i look at it as a television person that was like a thousand words to me that in 1970 and there is an old chinese saying that modified says tell me and i probably will forget, but show me and i might remembe and that is the role that we play sort of feeling that link of thehain of using the wonderful signings the national

weather service of noaa provides and then linking the that information with the graphic power that we have from the satellites from he raar to including the viewers, the visitors' understanding that and one of the things i do is understanding the strands of informal the education how people learn about science, the first strand is give them the moment and that is exactly what the satellite imagery does in their radar imagery does to look at some of those things, some of those images and we get the tool radar lenni you see the vertical profiles that is really and i know there's a tornado or severe storm there and then the of the third strand is if people can learn how to use scientific reasoning, then they are a part of the science and that is what this technology is doing we are able to show the people and they

can look at some of these imaes now and understand what he is showing that when he talks about this s a major severe storm, and this is the one we really have to watch so it is that vislization that every door and the satellite give and have given in the past and have the capability in the near future to give us much, muc more. >> tying together what actually happens because of the obseation systems that are in place in the satellites, a full six days in advance we started talking about the potential for severe weather. this started coming out of the noaa center as dr. sullivan said the national center. the information that gets passed on to us and what is called the weather forecasting office. we are one of 122 offices in the nation. we have four offices that serve the state of alabama, and speed is in the state served by a huntsville office and so we are

just in the south of birmingham. from there if we started talking about the possibilityand the likelihood of a strong to the long trek tornadoes three days in advance. that is unheard of starting out in my career years ago, a long time ago. that information then gets really to the managers, to our television partners come to the public through our web sites through social media ce through our forecasts and other services. we also have an 800 megahertz system we can talk directly to the emergency management with. from then a, when we have to we started getting into the sand, people took notice. the night before the event actually on folded we have schools that closed across the state of alabama in anticipation. the morning of the event, we had the state emergency management office at the feet like a land fall hurricane was about to

occur. the governor for the state of alabama actually signed an emergency declaration or proclamation about the oncoming weather. so, what happened when it got down to the field level is because of our relationsh that we have with our media emergency management and our other partners, they believed us and they started taking action of what was about to occur. we don't have slides or video that i wish i could show you. but for alabama, it truly was a terrific event. we had for the state actually came in three waves of severe weather. it started in the early morning about 3:00 or 4 o'clock in the morning. we had another waiver around noon. and then the final wave a lt of people saw in tuscaloosa and birmingham occurred in e late afternoon and into the evening hours we had a 24-hour period of severe weather. most -- about the southern half of the state of alabama was affected. between the two offices we issued about 200 mornings.

that is tornado warnings combined and hundreds of fallout as dr. sullivan mentioned a follow-up to let folks know the progress of each individual storm. and so that information got conveyed with an average lead time for all of the tornadoes about 24 minutes to read it is almost double the national average that we have for the tornado warnings nationwide. so, people knew that it was coming. people prepared. we had people off the oads, and then when we got to the eve and we were worng closely with emergency management during the yvette relating information. and then finally, we talked about the actual warning process itself. but it doesn't end there at the weather service because we spent the early weeks doing damage surveys because we actually go on the field and damage all of the surveys, damage, excuse me, surveys of all the damage out there at the beginning points and endpoints with intensity, dr. hayes was out visiting our

offices in alabama and that took weeks and to put this in perspective if we took all 62 tornado tracks that occurred in the state of alabama in the end was put in perspective, that is going from birmingham to boston on the road, and that is just all in the state of alabama so that is a horrific even. we have about 10 billion cubic yards of damage since in alabama we are big on football that is a football field damage a mile high and that is all the damage so for weeks afterwards where again working with emergency management and first responders, thousands of first responders local, state, federal partners we are helping firstresponders minute by minute forecasts using again all the systems because we have severe weather after the 27th of april. so we have to really minute by

minute information to keep these people say if only the folks that lost their homes, approximately 13,000 homes and alabama were completely destroyed or major damage uninhabitable. but also to protect first responders out there. so literally for tho of us of the field level, the severe weather ease and began in mid to late april and it didn't wrap up until just recently with all of the surveys, all of the information provided to the first responders and i will go to eddie on that. >> i can tell you that what we have is true of the partnership between the media and the weather service offices and the local offices. there are a couple of things we do in preparation for these events. we work with the weather service on a severe weather storms potter class's and that isn't really to get all the folks out there to get all excited about chasing storms, but its

practical training where we have our police officers, fire folks, ems people, school representatives that are going to have to be around any way, and we train them, we all train them, not me, we just provide the room, and they would actually train them where to look in the system and what to look for and how to report what they are seeing. so the radar image is good, but we are able to tell, to take that radar image and what is happening on the ground with the radar image. so it is ground prove reporng. the other thing that we do in preparation for this is our county will go out and actually do severe weather surveys in the different facilities. some of my counterparts won't do that because of the liability, and i can tell you my response back to that. if i'm going to get food i'm

going to get it for doing something instead of nothing. so, just to a number oyou are going to sue me for that. [laughter] we are not professionals and that we tell them up front that the best thing to do is get an engineer tocome in but from our perspective, these rooms are what we feel like are the safest areas, and there has been places some of these buildings we just say we are sorry, we can't find a place that we consider safe at all and what we tell those if you were going to do any additional construction, that is the time to provide shelter at that time because it is a mere fraction of the cost if you do it passed a part of the building construction. and so, it is a process that we go through there. now, what happens with our weather service partners is we start regular briefings from officials and it's not just the

emergency management offices. we bring our superintendent of education, we bring our law enforcement fire and so it is nothing to have 30 or 4 people in the operations center just before the briefing, and it really all depends on how serious, how much you scared us as to what is going on, but you know, it really depends on that. but they aren't getting a fithand from the weather service what to expect, and i can tell you that just like you were talking about the details that they had when this system started, we knew that it was going to start sometime after dnight. it started about 3:00 was the first warning that started. that was absolutely not a surprise for us. we had already determined about what time we were going to activate our emergency operations center. based on what we were told by the weather service, we didn't

bring all hands in the cooking to every emergency operations center. we brought 86 - in there because based on what we were told by the professionals, they would be in three ways, and it was. we knew that the third wave was the one that we really had to gear up for, so each wave that came through we added a few additional people, and the rationale behind that is we don't want to wear everybody ought because you are talking about 18 hours is what this day -- i don't want to live through it again that it was 18 hours a lot of times the intent response. whenwe talk about activating our emergency operations centers we bring representatives from law enforcement to fight your ems, red cross, salvation army, our volunteer organizations active in disaster and an hour county we bring industrial representatives rescue squad

volunteer fire reps and of education. those are just the ones the we will bring in and then the reason we do that is because we know that if we get hit like we are anticipating that we need to start an immediate response. and so, we don't want to lose the two hours that would take to assemble levity that are already there and ready to respond. i can tell you that the huntsville weather service office issued 20 separate tornado warnings just from my county, 20 separate tornado warnings, and the favorite thing that they told me was they would geon and say morgan county we are issuing another tornado warning for your county. and one thing we do, we don't want to cry wol, with the warnings of the weather service has done that issomething that you are not warning for the

entire county any longer it is just a section of the county the storm is and will be affecting. we are one of the ones in the state that only try to send our sirens in that warning area and so what happens with the big storms that ame through, we are big on redundancy of our systems. if one system goes down, we have a backup system in its place. so, what we have in place for four different tv stations that we could monitor the radar. we got access to two different feeds on the over the internet from the weather service and a coercial service that we depend on. well, the cable went out, so that took out four of the systems there. in the internet went out. so, we could ot take that box

as the weather service issued for the western portion of the county that didn't mea anything to me what part of the western part of the county because i need to sound of thosesirens. so i would have to go in and get them to verbally tellme over the radio what communities were affected, then i was able to go back and and sou of sirens just in that area. but i can tell you when your power goes out because we were fortunate with morgan county the five contigus counties around my county had anyhere from ten to 20 times damage that we had. we were forcing it n that we were put in the southwestern corner about 3 miles across their to a 60-mile track a clip from one county, 3 miles in my county and then into another county, and then in fun north western corner they got a 3-mile track there, same thing from one

county to the other. 100 houses were affected in my county. the other counties ere anywhere from, you know, 300 or 400 to 0,000 or whatever. so we were so fortunate that all of our -- we were so fortunate compared with any of y neighbors there and so we were able to help and offer response to the other counties. one of the things that happened, we have another little s the zeros we had three tornadoes that hit the county. that was what, 75 miles per hour? it took out five of the major transmission's coming into the county. it took out all of the power to the county and they said it would be at least two weeks before we got power back, it was five days but they made us feel better, a whole lot better. but you know, with our response, it was definitely there were no

real surprises other than the one numbers that were dealt with, but the timing was right on target. we had the stuffing committee and the public knew what was going on because for days the untold what to expect from that and unfortunately we have loss of life and that is one of the things we need to take from this what is the next step because we had adequate warnings but we ill have a loss of life, so we've got to take that and learn from this. >> i think that polygon points out what you have been talking been able to narrow things down from a timing standpoint maybe you could expand on that. >> sortridge for those who don't know how polygon is a multi cited of warning and we have all seen these hurricanes about to make land fall it shows the cone of where we expect the track to be. we do that with individual

stores. so we only worn a certain sections of the county or a number of counties based on where we expect that severe weather to be and that is why because it polygon warnings, so we are getting down to the fine scale of exactly where we think the severe weather is going to be so we are reducing, greatly ducing our false alarm rate area of all of our individual warnings. >> i want to ask you to do one other thing. it's a great description of these amazing defense. one might have listened to that and got the sense of the forecast office does is just received satellite imagery in the model law output and pick up the phone and talk to the emergency folks. would you unpacked a little more? what is the actual process of your experts, professional experts of the weather service an to take that communications step. >> th data was wonderful but conveying that through the customers is vital to get the information that the public.

for this event, we have never seen the parameters. i personally have never seen in my 30 year career the parameters leading to this event for an outbreak of this magnitude. i used words like armageddon, death and destruction. i heard from emergency management as we ga statewide briefings of how the tone of my voice i never heard that type of tone before. we also talked about it with the media as well. our media in alabama, you were not there, goes wall-to-wall with all of the tornado warnings. so whether they were on a wall to wall without the interruption from 3 a.m. in the morning until almost midnght, we were using things like the national weather service chad, instant messaging deutsch and emergency managers and media partners, storm spotters, the web information. seóul this is being conveye to the boots on the ground type of concept is this information was great, but those of us n the field who were working with

these folks are really into that and developing the trust relationships so people, when they hear it, listen to us. >> but how do you convert the central guidance you get from the nation center for environmental protection and the satellite? what are the technical steps as converting that into the knowledge that starts you down that through the public on and talk to people pass? what is the part in between? >> we will take the signs being written in the center of the information and start putting them into our own what i called a reena forecast discussion's coming year of a logical discussions but we expect the event to be and we will then start talking about the placement of what type of severe weather we expect, where we expected and as mentioned, time frame to actually honed in where folks can understand what we are expecting. once the warnings become issued, then we are starting to talk about the polygons and in describing in the term that goes on the radio and that goes out as a tone alert for those and i of the congressman bacchus couldn't make it but he has the gislation to put the

manufactured homes, so that information goes out in the multiple means to basically tell peopleexactly where the storm is and where it's going and we will update the warnings frequently every several minutes to give updates of where the storm is and also talk about the intensity. we will also be gathering information from emergency management media in real time instant messaging. it's among the things we used was the television cameras out on the field and some of our folks to solve that. it was emotional. some of our staff members became very emotionally overcome in this event. they have never been in something like this and it's something we didn't anticipate coming and i will see first hand that we expected strong tornadoes. we never expected the magnitude. we never expected a total of 11 violent trade was across the state in that day. it was just a horrific event. ..

>> let me point out, and i think a loss of data can lead to a loss of accuracy. if we have a set back in accuracy, we lose, we may lose the confidence of the person making the decision in the forecat, and once we lose that confidence in the forecast as with anything, it takes a long time to get that confidence back. we can want risk a lo, any loss of data.

we cannot risk having a set back that then will lead to a greater loss of life, and the thout came to mind there's been a number of studies to try and put the perspectives of the terrible outbreaks and historical perspectives and what if it happened back in the 20s and 30s with somethi o this magnitude, the loss of life may have been in the tens of thousands as tragic as it was in the hundreds. all of us involved in the enterprise have never seen anything like that. in a historical perspective before the modern tools, before the data, before the system in place, the loss of life would have been hoer horrendous. >> maybe i can just comment on one experiment that we've done to try to understand rigorously what it would mean if we didn't have that afternoon polar

satellite. so we took severe snow event of 2010, and we archive all the data from that event. we can take all the data gathered and processed in the real event and reprocess it. we did that except we took out the polar afternoon satellite data. in the ree event, in the actual event, it was in the tornado alley, but in the winter time, drenches rains, far enough north dumped 19-22 inches of snow. the forecast, again, five days out, high probability, severe storm. storm tracks like this. the contour lines say heavy rain expected here and heavy snow expected here. three days out, refining the contour lines, numbers on them. the forecast track wason the money for where the storm went. the storm amount range was 18-22

inches. it was 19 incs in the fact in the bull's eye where the forecast predicted the most intense snowfall. tt's how the real forecast went in the real event with the full data set. what happens when you pull the amp polar data out, when you bnded the satellite system by one eyehat has a chance of being blinded in 2016? he trk was off tens of miles. the amount of snow forecast was under forecast. the analysis was low by 50 #%. imagine being the eddy hicks here in the metro area, a three-day outlook there could be snow, but in the front range, not a big deal for the city. that's wrong, and it slams the city. imagine there's an outlook that there's eight on nine inches of snow. that's one class response. if you know what the kind of

accuracy that we've been talking about here on tornadoes on this day starting at about that time, an intense snowfall event leaving you 22 inches of snow on the ground, you'll behave differently. if you're the personnel manager, you encourage them to get out of town so there's not thousands of people stranded in cars on the highway in a severe cold event, ect., ect.. that's one example. that illustrates the scale of sensitivity that the forecast can have to this loss of data. we're not talking about slightly wrong. we're talking potentially 50% less good on where a storm is going or what the consequences it dumps on the ground may be. you know, human beings are pattern response people. one or two times you tell me you can count on this, it's going here, and it comes and hits me here? all of us -- all of us will

begin to not respond to warnings. >> following on that theme then in the context of this pending data gap perhaps, the 2016, this gps system has a pretty long pedigree. colorado rocky road with impose. given that and what you discussed, the vital importance of not losing that afternoon, when is noaa thinking about in terms of a different model for placing a polar orbiting satellite in space in the future so there's not as much of a risk ofosing that given budgetary constraints or anything else. what system is out there with a shorter timeline but gives good data or adequate data so you are not facing this 2016 blind spot

if you will? >> so, that's a great question. we're looking at all of those questions, and we find that buy a variety of necessities are seeking false into two-time domains. there is the gps system was for a number of years maged in a different arrangement with what is now jpfs that involved the relationship with the department of defense. that was proved very dficult to make wk. there were cost overruns that have been refaced and broken apart so there's a distinct weather and military program. having said that, there's still years of development. we are ll down the road towards the specific stellite. as we loo at that program in 2011 and how to get to a 2015-16 time frame, anyone who knows compl system engineering and procurement and development, you actually begin to raise the risk

dramatically the more you keep churning the program around and shifting courses on it. you have a lot of momentum. contract expertise, spacecraft already under way, so it appears to ushat on the one hand the least risk profile to minimize controlling gaps as much as possible is to stabilize and carry on with the jpfs program. there may need to be takes in the particulars of the program. your question in my view pertains to and what's next after that? are there -- there are emerging and different capabilities in the private sector space community now than before. there's been fascinating experiments. there have been e peermts with constellations and formations of smaller satellites so what instruments could you do, what capability could they have? most of the instruments thus far

is what people brought to our attention to consider. i would say noaa put out several requests for information. we formally gorp the pro-- begun the process of talking with industry and academia. it is demanding. you know, the center needs to be starring at the right place and scanning the right things at the right time. that tends to narrow the range of pay lord opportunity you might do. somebody is putting a gps satellite up, and says i can give you acreage, and mosof the time your instrument can look here, but i might have to do something else with the satellite. it's a complex picture. we'll continue to work with it, work with partners, and work for pathways and assess their technical and cost capabilities. >> queson?

>> yes, rick lopez. one thing i wanted to say is tha based on your presentation it's obvious what you guys do is more valuable than all the instruments we bail out on wall street to our congress. [laughter] now, it seems also to me it's apparent that cutting the budget on this technology is outright criminal and rder against our population, so should citizens demand the removal of politicians who impose brutal pos tearty and including president obama who forget to mention he played a role in cutting the satellites. >> dr. sullivan, do you want to answer that question? [laughter] >> i'll be happy to answer it too. i've been that 10-year-old kid who loved snowstorms. when the president gave the

speech on the economy did mention two words "weather satellites" as being important and part of something that should not be cut. in all candor had not heard those two words before in a presidential speech and almost fell off my chair. i think he pointed out the vital importance and that as being one of the critical functions of government that should be maintained. >> i guess i would say in my experience as a private citizen for the last 15 years because i only returned from government service 90 days ago. it was remarkable to me -- i guess like any infrastructure, you know, out of sight is a bit out of mind; right? there's a evening forecast on tv, i can count on it. the lights will come on when i flip the switch. i can count on it. what, why, and how that magic actually depends on, we all just put in the background, and we

tend not to think about it and take it for granted. there's been a tendency as well, and i say this intending exactly no blame to anybody, but there's been a tendency that i've encountered in my community in ohio to think about if someone thinks about noaa at all, they say, i don't know what you do. i get my weather from the weather channel. [laughter] okay, so i think thateneral disawareness, if you will, of the reality that the way this enterprise works is it stands on this foundation, this public service, public good foundation, this tremendously vibrant commercial sector from weather channel to my friend here object left draws on that data. it's a fap by louse -- fabulous market segment and low barriers to entry. i bet there's 13 students at the

dp now coming up with the next clever apps for phones. i hope they all succeed and have a new business. that all springs off of this public good, public available foundation, so we lose the bubble on that. we think fedex delivers the freight and the highway system has nothing to do with it. aughter] in my experience over the past 90 days, i'd say the rate at which the awareness has been growing as perhaps we have done a bett job of making communities an interested stake holder, that has been happening. the president has mentioned it in a couple of speeches. i can tell you it's mentioned in cabinet meetings by other cabinet secretaries, in context of these events, sretary sebelius and we're growing of

the awareness. the awareness comes after when you actually needed the awareness, and you have to deal with how do we recover as much of that lapse in times as we can. we've seen good support within the administration so far and working hard on the problem including support from our fellow cabinet agency and agencies like fema, so i don't have that complaint. >> i would add also in the question that this is a month of the most bipartisan of areas. senator shelby certainly from alabama, ed hoff from oklahoma. these are staunch republican senators from staunch republican areas, and the satellite weather forecast chain is as strong there as any place in the country, and i think we

recognize that. other questions? >> tornadoes don't know which party they are on. [laughter] julie campbell, the campbell group. this is for dr. sullivan. when we're talking about how ten uos the programs are and the advanced warnings for preparing for severe weather, what is your wish list or priority for increasing the robustness of the system and are there any data sets that you would like to increase the capabilities of somewhere down the line? >> julie, are you -- you mean satellites per se with your question or the full infrastructure of the weather foreclosure enterprise? 93% of the data invested by the weather models are satellite data, and the bulk of that by

far is something around 85% of that segment comes from the polar satellites. with the responsibility to do all we can to maintain the accuracy of national public forecast, i would have to place the polar satellites highest on ourist. geostationary and the founders and instruments there are not far behind, but there's other elements within the infrastructure that noaa relies on to do its portion of this job. there's other key infrastructure points. we obviously depend critically on a telecommunications backbone and architecture to get the data to the right places, to the prediction, down to the satellites. there are risky points in that syem, in keeping that current and robust so there's not multiple embedded single point failures is something we pay close attention to. when you get down to the shorter -- well, let me go the rest of the way down the chain. when the weather data, the

central guidance model, images arrive at a weather forecast office, jim an his colleagues use a workstation called the advanced weather processing system, awps. he's been humble and gracious of dodging the question of how awesome he is towards tipping his hands in the communications challenge, but point of fact the workstation competing power to mesh the models, mesh the data to bring in nets and other local and regional scale data fuse that together, look at the calculated vertical index sighs and bring ology of that together -- bring all that together in front of a forecaster focused on a roajal scale to spot where to think about drawing the polygons

and why it's drawn here. that's a remarkable fusion of data. it's a fabulous step forward the weather channel achieved in the early 90s. that's another crical step in the infrastructure, and then finally the instrumentation that lets the very short time frame, smaller scale insight about the dynamics happen, and that's where the radars come into play. someone -- i apologize, i forget who, commented -- joe commented i think, still struggling a bit where the sw line is. you also struggle with which reflection pool is a bird. the current radars send out waves in just one plane like that. there are radars that can send and receive with both the shape of a wave, and that's dual polarization, and that kind of advance lets you discern far more accurately the particular motion of particles and you are

sure if it's rain, snow, hail, or birds or even cricke. [laughter] that's one of the advances that's we're on the doorstep of it. it's under test and eluation. we know a lot about it. we know about how to bring it into service. it's a capital expense. it's a budget question, and u know, a migration path to bring it fully up to the service level that the weather forecast office folks would need. i'll touch on another radar advance. it's a little further down the hoer horizon, but it exists and is in test at norman. it's a multifunction phase array. the multifunctions are dishes that spin rapidly, you can move them in elevion, but it takes time to do a circuit and get you a 360 degree picture of the sky. solid state phased arrays, this really is an analog, your clunky

disk job that was a tape moving in your machine and a flash drive. that technology is on our threshold as well as inconstitution to the forecasting system. that would take scan times for folks like jim and ed with tornadoes instead of volume measured in minut, it's i seconds. you would have an ability to hone in on a portion of t storm complex that you knew you needed to see much finer scale on and almost sort of stare at it in fine scale and track areas of concern. i worry mainly about sustaining. i'm obliged to care about sustaining and the capability we rovide the nation today and do everything we can to be sure there's not a retreat in that capability, and secondly, i worry about the progressive incremental slow judicious technology refresh, and i worry if there's enough 10-year-old boys and girls fascinated by

hurricanes, storms, and tornadoes and can come through a strong science pipeline and continue this enterprise in the future. >> a quick comments on hurricanes in particular rmt one of the things in the future is we'll have better night vision. sometimes we had what's called morning surprise. oh, what we saw with infrared in the nighttime is different between the upper level of the hurricane and the lower level where the eye is. the event is in the future. it will give night capability and no surprise in the morning. could be 100 miles. >> another question here? [inaudible conversations] >> thanks. i'm julia edwards with national journal, and i was just reminded of all the extreme weather events we've had in the past decade, year even, and just thinking about how these vests have been archived and with

budget cuts, would you see less accuracy -- would you be able to discern with less accuracy weatheratterns happening across the world? would there be a loss of data there with cuts? >> noaa's national climate data is one of the key depositories for all the data d increasingly fo the output, the model output because that's our best description of what was the actual weather on a given day often is the model output, so, i mean, yes. no news to anybody who's been breathing in the last few weeks, every piece and corner of the federal budget is under pressure. the non-discretionary budgets are under pressure and have been for a number of years. i would say that has not yet in a draconian way affected our abili to continue the

archiving that we've been doing, but when we bring even the npp satellite and jps and t next generation on to line, they do generate higher precision, more fine skilled channels, more definition in the spectrum yore looking at. the data volumes take a step function forward, and we will be having to work hard to have the storage capacity and the access capacity to serve the scientific cmunity and our own research base to try to extract value out of that, so the other piece of all of this enterprise that i fret about is, you know, we should be -- and we are doing a good job of this -- but i want us to continually work on this as well and advance it. the nation -- we invest in observations to make measurements to turn into information that matters. it's -- we should continually

strive to do the measure once, use many times, and so the archiving, the access for researchers, for private sector partners, for firms, firms that want to mine that data baseand tell an agricultural concern, what's the longer term pattern here? is past still good for you in the next ten year planning horizon? should you base it on the last five year ten year average? anything shifting in the way to adjust accordingly? the data says the answer to that question is yes. it is true that trends are shifting and past is not as good a prologue as it's been in our historical lifetimes, so how do we continue to support the ability to measure once and use many times so that the country gets the maximum possible total value out of investment we make in the observing infrastructure. >> i'll mention quickly that the national science foundation al

in terms of fundamental response supports a number of things. at the university of oklahoma they mpile for six weeks in the spring at every kilometer, every five minutes for the 48 states, what the weather is like so you have every kilometer every five minutes including the vertical profile what the weather is like, and as someone said in typical, it is like having all the game fields to go back and study. why do we make the interpretation, the touch down, what did the game films look like? you can imagine for this past year, these films will be viewed many times as we go back to try to undstand everything that was happening. it's very good question. >> reminds me coming here that we had a somewhat similar debate

more than 20 years ago with the weather service going through the modernization, and there was a move -- do we need this next red? it's costing too much. what's thepplication of it? fortunately, the program was maintained, continued, the funding was continued even though there were some voices were overrun a bit, pull it back, but imagine if more th 20 years ago the nonfunding was undertaken? what would have happened this year? what is it about? if we don't remember history, we're doomed to repeat it. let's hope we don't repeat it and remember what happened more than 22 years ago with the modernization funding that was a very spirited discussion at that time. >> question here and then here. >> martha brad it national association of emergency managers, and we're always concerned about the local weather offices and the staffing

of the local weather offices because those are just a matter of life safety to us. in the current budget situation, if it -- what you already know of your 2012, will you will able to maintain all of the local forecast offices and fully staff them? >> looking for a wiping -- wink and a nod from the national weather service here. [ughter] certainly what we know of fy11 and i think what we can see -- remember, we only have the mark up from the house of representatives currently for 12, but certainly under the president's budget for fy12, we would not face any forcing functions that require any substantial realignment of any number of offices or staffing, and as you know, we work closely with beth the wfo personnel and the national weather service employees organization on those kinds of questions.

>> hi, chris mackente,. dr. sullivan and the panel, you did a great job talking aout why this is a safety issue with dramatic weather events this year and it's not a partisan issue. expand a little bit perhaps on other uses of the data coming from weather satellites that's important to the nation in terms of aviation indury, fishery, agricultures, what the air force does with it. i think it's important for others to hear tt this is important public safety issue, but also an important national security and economic engine for us as a country. >> dr. sullivan is excellent, but let me also say for those of us living in the great plains right now, just the day-to-day is severe weather, just t day-to-day that we're having.

>> thank you for pointing another dimension of this. it was stated some years ago that one-third of the united states gdp is weathercepstive. you -- weather sensitive. you touched on sectors tat that applies to. there's also economic analysis that quantify the proportion of aviation weather delays that cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year primarily due to weather. i have to confess at the moment that fig escapes me, but in the 50% range of aviation delays that are weather related, so if you think about the way we make decisions today not just in the life and safety sector, but in the operating of the major enterprises down to small businesses that are the economic vitality of this country, i can't think of anyo --

thinking of the last 15 years living in the midwest in ohio, i can't think of anybody who i knew in sectors ranging from retail distribution to banking to utility generation who were not paying very close attention to weather, to weather outlooks, weather trends, and refining their business operating decisions accordingly. it has become environmental intelligence which is another critical strand of business intelligence is the way i would sum it all up, and i think that statement has something between huge validity and significant validity across almost every sector of our economy if we delve into it. >> just a quick point. we remember the significant delays with volcano activities in iceland and europe. there's volcanos in the western u.s. and alaska and the new satellite will give us a 3-d view, n we fly above or below? is it a narrow band?

we'll have benter observations of aerosols or the particles from the volcanos. >> what i'd like to do now is to draw this phase of the discussion, and i'm delihted that it has become a disssion to a brief closure, but we'd like to move the discussion to room 2325 to have a face-to-fce discussion. as i do close the program, i want to mention one final story from oklahoma and an acknowledgement. i mentioned my first day when i saw sever weather. i had been in oklahoma 11 months and about three quarters of a month, and we had the may 24th outbreak. i did not know what was all going to go on, but i recounted most of it except for the very final part, and that was when we

evacuated off the top floors down to the first floor into the large lecture rooms which have special construction, left the skeleton crew and the weather forecast office on the second floor: we essentially tracked what was happening on the internet very large screens. there were children in there, dogs, cats that were in there, elderly people in wheelchairs were in there, and we watched what was happening. we watched the polygon come up. eryone got quiet. it came up just south of the national weather center almost touching it. the polygon stayed lit ere the tornado touched down, and what i did not realize was the police force in oklahoma have helicopters that are deployed and orchestrated in to observe

what is happening, and so the tornado passed through, the police force helicoer came in, and what we saw was the following: there was a house completely gone, completely gone. tv camera dwelled on that, and then we saw a door open, and two small children got out, the mother and father got out, and the cat got out, and there was no house, andhey just looked at one another, and i thought they would have all five been dead without what we had, and it was the polygon that simply said go to ground, and they did. that is a real event. in my final acknowledgement, i'd like to thank also not only the hu, but the ams and john malay,

president of ams that is here, and dave taylor, president of bal is here. we want to move to room 2325 for a continued discussion face-to-fashion. thank you to everyone and i particularly thank the panel. [applause] [inaudible convsations] inaudible conversations] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> next, a senate hearing on the future of home mortgage assistance programs. and live at 7:00 a.m., your calls and comments on "washington journal." new jersey congressman christopher smith, chairman of the foreign affairs subcommittee on africa, global health, and human rights, he discusses how the u.s. is addressing the famine in somalia and the islamist shall be an group, the tensions between sudan and south sudan, and u.s. foreign aid to africa and elsewhere, in an era of tightening budget. "newsmakers" today at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> six, eight, nine. >> nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. these are the stakes.

to make a world in which all of god's children can live. or to go into the dark. we must either love each other or we must die. >> vote for president johnson on november 3. >> this weekend, we'll look at the history of political campaign ads with l.s.u. professor robert mann. also, former homicide detective james lavell on the day jack ruby killed the man under his protection, lee harvey on the waled. and former speech writers for president nixon reveal how his messages were crafted and community. american history tv on c-span3. get the complete weekend schedule at on c-span.org/history. >> witnesses told a senate banking subcommittee wednesday that low interest, 30-year fixed mortgages could become a thing of the past if government backing for home mortgages goes away. since the 2008 financial crisis, lawmakers have been

exploring options to reduce the government's role in the home mortgage market. some of those options include fannie mae, freddie mac, and ginnie mae, companies now controlled by the government. this is an hour. >> this morning, we are examining the finance system, specifically the "to be announced" market. in may, the subcommittee conducted a hearing on the state of the securitization market. this morning's hearing continues the subcommittee's examination of the securitization markets with particular focus on a part of the securitization system important to finance. and this is the "to be announced" or t.b.a. market. in the early 1970's, the t.b.a. market began as a trading venue for securities that were issued by guineaae