is a shameful role call is a -- of the most catastrophic betrayals and blunders of our lifetime. he's spent his entire career on the wrong side of history. mr. biden: our current president has failed in his most basic duty to the nation -- he has failed to protect us. he has failed to protect america. and, my fellow americans, that is unforgivable. >> the first presidential debate between donald trump and joe biden is tuesday, september 29th at 9 p.m. eastern. watch live coverage on c-span. watch live streaming and on-demand at c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. we are joined next by former federal emergency management agency administrator craig fugate. thank you for being with us on "washington journal" this morning. guest: thanks for having me.

host: a number of items on our plate including the covid-19 response. first, to the response to hurricane laura. the hurricane coming effectively the same week marking 15 years since hurricane katrina. what lessons do think fema and the federal government learned in terms of response to hurricanes in particular? guest: i think the biggest lesson was that we don't wait until we are asked to start getting ready. to be ana, there seem lot of confusion about the governor having to make requests and what fema's role was going to be. congress, after katrina launched substantial legislation. governors are going to be is he dealing with this. the federal government doesn't have to wait. we start moving resources and i think you see this response has increased.

we are not waiting for these assessments. you talked about states being prepared and fema being prepared, but what about individuals? do you think u.s. households are better prepared than they used to be to handle things during a natural disaster? guest: we get better at some things and not as good in others. if you look at what has happened in hurricane laura, we were fortunate. there seem to be very low loss-of-life due to the impacts of the storm. a lot of people heated the evacuations even in the time of covid. unfortunately, we have seen a lot of deaths associated with carbon monoxide due to improper use of generators. we have to continue to increase the lessons we learned. even after a hurricane, it can be dangerous and deadly for people in the recovery process. one headline says calamity visits again.

last week, the whole hurricanes shaped up to be a one-two punch. it didn't work out necessarily, but there were two major storms hitting the gulf coast. in your experience, have you ever seen a season as busy as this in terms of hurricanes? guest: so far, yes. florida got hit with four hurricanes in 2004. in 2005, we were using the greek alphabet. we are not even in the peak of the hurricane season. we still have a long ways to go, but it has been very active so far. laura, aular, with very early hurricane. oft: the former director fema talking about response to hurricanes, covid-19 pandemic and wildfires. we welcome your comments. one line for those of you in the eastern and central time zones,

one in mountain and pacific. what does your organization do? guest: basically, policy and communication. we do a lot of work in the flood space talking about how to look at flood policy going forward. our national flood insurance program. it has a lot of challenges, but more importantly, as we continue to see increasing flood risk, we still see a lot of folks who don't have flood insurance. we see that a lot of our infrastructure isn't keeping up with increased flooding risk. host: an covid-19 response, what was fema's role as one of the lead agencies and responding to the pandemic? guest: it changed. our plans in planning for pandemics is based upon what we have learned with h1n1 and ebola was that fema would play a role, but it would be a supporting role to the lead agency, which

would be services. --a's task was consequent concentrating on the consequences of the pandemic. we saw early, it seemed that was not what the plan was going to be. fema was put into the role of coordinating a lot of the resource requests to this. that put fema into an area that it had done a lot of resources, but these were resources it didn't have a lot of experience with. there was a period there with both hyper demand as well as fema having to literally play catch up to the resource requests. host: you're talking about personal protective equipment and things like that? guest: everything from the ventilators. probably the biggest thing we identified as one of the big shortfalls was the ppe, particularly, the medical grade

n95 masks. had seen this previously with ebola and others on a much smaller scale. we knew ppe was going to be one of the items that in a pandemic, was going to be in huge demand. i think that is one of the challenges. no one really thought about how big the number was going to be about how much you needed. it seemed like everybody was grabbing whatever they could to try to meet the demands of what was occurring. host: what was on the books in terms of that response and plan? how much to the federal government have stockpiled or should have had stockpiled in preparation for something like this? guest: the national stockpile was never designed for a pandemic. they were designed for point specific disasters, bio tax, something geographically limited. we really look at the national stockpile as a pushback. when dealing with a pandemic,

ideally, you would contain a and have a few cases or areas being hit and that would be a geographically based response. it also meant that if we didn't get containment, things like the defense production act had to be evoked early to start folks prioritizing and coordinating additional production of ppe, most of which was overseas, and looking at how you would increase domestic production while maximizing -- again, every country was competing for these resources. without domestic production capability, we fell behind and it was difficult to get caught back up. our lines are regional. on that defense production act, the president was called on to use that for production of essential material. do you think the administration

should have acted sooner on that? or acted more broadly in implement thing that act? where we are at now, it is an easier question to answer. we should have turned it on earlier. it is a huge impact on disrupting supply chains. in many cases, you are not sure how much you are going to need early on. by the time you know you need it, it is usually too late. one of the lessons i think we are going to come out of this is how do we increase domestic production of some of this ppe, how much we should maintain the stockpile and what is the best way to leverage the defense production act when you're not sure how bad it could be. host: doesn't a little bit kobach to the individual and family preparation for these sorts of things in relation to hurricanes? guest: again, when we were talking about originally, the

whole issue with covid-19, it was a novel virus, which meant we had never experienced it before and would constantly learn. we started out with social distancing and washing our hands, and then we added masks. we have learned this is a fairly significant airborne threat. that ability to provide those supplies, in the beginning, was very short. now that we are starting to get to the point that we have enough, it is important that people wear a mask in their outdoor activities when they are meeting other people enclosed spaces. wearing we maintain masks and social distancing, the slower the outbreak is spreading. host: let's go to calls and hear first from gary in east brunswick, new jersey. go ahead. caller: thank you very much for picking up. i am 82 years old. i live in east brunswick, new jersey.

i want to complement the mayor of east brunswick. he is a physician and a great mayor and a great leader. i want to also thank the police brunswick and the emergency management coordinator. i spent 50 years and the health care field. on the editor of a textbook in that field. and the editor in chief and founder of a journal. i have to complement these men for the outstanding jobs they have done during not only the pandemic, but also the storms a couple weeks ago. the leadership, one of the great mayors of the county of middlesex in the state of new jersey, active in the board of education, an elected official and now the city mayor of east brunswick, knows exactly what to

do together with the emergency management coordinator who has been one for 38 years. i, myself, have bought masks from the pharmacy and give them support people, given them to small retail shops. i also am the one that called the governor's office of the state of new jersey on april 1 and told the secretary and the state health administrator if the governor does not issue and a proclamation to wear a mask, i will call the community called diseases center, which he did issue with a few days later and his office called me and then, i called safe in shoprite and told them if they didn't shutdown the salad bars, there will be a price to pay. host: i will let you go. guest: again, we are seeing across the country, the pandemic reached to every community. it wasn't uniform. this has moved into rural

america, middle america. what started out being an east coast and west coast epicenter has spread. unfortunately, we have seen some areas do very well and be aggressive in our measures. other areas didn't seem to have the same leadership or desire to do some of these things. their cases skyrocketed. concord north in carolina, republican line. go ahead. caller: i was just wanting to know when he thinks about the cdc coming out and saying 94% of the virus was misrepresented. they are saying only 6% had the virus and they have made that public. and how it has changed to the world. i just don't understand that. the cdc. made that clear.

94% were misinterpreted. so far, the medical establishments and looking at how they are counting deaths, over 180 thousand people have died of the virus. that is more than we have seen from a lot of other causes. average loss of life from traffic crashes every year is about 50,000. we know that covid doesn't affect everybody the same. supery cases, we have the spreaders who are not even displaying symptoms. the mortality rate for covid is significant for those that do have conditions. and in some cases, even young people and children, we are seeing deaths associated or related to the covid infection. a line for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. and pacificmountain

time zones. our guest is craig fugate. on the wildfires in california, wildfires stretch capacity showing the number of acres burned in 2020 and still early in the season at fairly record levels. it is sort of a triple punch here with the fires out west, hurricane season still well underway and the pandemic still going on. of fema ever faced the sort crises on multiple fronts like this before? guest: not with the pandemic. hurricanealt with season and wildfires coexisting at the same time, but a lot of what fema does is in support of our states. i think there is a tendency to think that fema is the only organization tourist bond. -- two respond.

host: we go to our independent .ine caller: the collins are east coast, west coast and text. i am an independent. , in regards becomes to covid-19 and storm threats. back in 1938, there was a massive storm that came up the east coast. had the best scenario for the where a bermuda high dropped and spinning clockwise and another front spinning counterclockwise that pushed the storm 55 miles an hour up and hit up in vermont as a category one. back in the late 90's and early 2000's, there was another storm

that had the exact same. it jumped into the carolinas, but 24 hours later the jetstream in and 24 hours later, the bermuda high have dropped down and you could have had an identical effect to the 1938 storm. if you had a catastrophic storm, such as in 1938, which could have repeated itself, with the covid-19 preparations, along with such a catastrophic storm hitting long island and destroying long island, because it was all agricultural land back then, would fema be able to handle that? again, fema is just part of the team. when you get into high population areas, there is a lot of challenges but also a lot of

resources from state and local governments. he brought up a point that in dealing with covid and hurricanes, we are going to have to look very carefully on making sure people understand the risk from hurricanes is primarily water. if you look at the hurricane center data and looking back at storms over centuries, the leading cause of death is drowning or water related trauma. we want to remind people that if you are in a evacuation zone, the biggest risk is going to be drowning and water related traumas. we stony people to evacuate even in the era of covid. the reason we think the loss of laura was low was the number of people who did he the evacuations and moved inland. the most important thing to remember is that covid is bad, drowning is worse and we need people to evacuate if their communities are threatened by these hurricanes. host: i think we started out by saying the number of deaths was

around 15 or 16 mainly from carbon monoxide poisoning. guest: this is something i really saw in florida in the 2004 hurricanes. we had more deaths after the storms then we did from direct impacts. things like generator safety. a lot of times, people just don't use generators. they forget that generators produce carbon monoxide. we remind people to keep those things far away from your house. don't put them in your garage and don't run them in your home. make sure the exhaust is pointed away from the house. the problem with carbon monoxide is that it is odorless and deadly and often one of the most common events we have seen with generators. improper placement and running those generators when carbon monoxide gets into the home. host: let's hear from the gulf coast. caller: thank you for taking my call.

i'm talking about fema, the storms and the fires that have been going on and coronavirus. i don't blame that on our president. i blame it on the presidents that were in office way before us. they could have caught onto all of that in time. it was like the election is and donald trump and obama and allowing them to come over. it wasn't his fault, it wasn't nobody else's fault but the government. it is like i said, i've been fighting with the government for years over fema. i lost three trailers, three vehicles. i didn't get nothing back because i didn't have no address. what do you do about that? you can't keep fighting them. so what do you do? i believe donald trump has done more for us than obama. host: did you lose these

trailers in one particular storm or where these several different incidents? caller: storms. i'm still fighting it. it is like i said, i can't get no help down here because the way it is with the justice department and fema, if you don't have a current address or a permanent address and it was my permanent address, it was just my name wasn't on the box. host: we will let you go there. any thoughts? guest: this was something we have run into before where we have had people who are impacted because of oftentimes passing property down. we basically came up with a way to work around that so we could help folks. generally, if we can make it work, we do. isetimes the challenge getting help the people that need it versus making sure that there is not fraud in other

circumstances. if that is a legitimate complaint, hopefully that is something we could figure out how to do. the goal wasn't to keep you fm o get assistance to as many people as possible. host: the new york times has a piece on hurricane laura. they write "in the working class neighborhoods in and around lake charles, louisiana, how difficult the path ahead would be became clear. the storm inflicted was so severe that it will be an immense undertaking just to clear debris. beyond the physical labor, residents were also stepped into the thicket of bureaucracy with insurance claims and application for government aid. inspectors surveyed more than 200 damaged homes and issued

more than $650,000 in assistance. is that pretty typical in terms of this be the reaction of officials in issuing that assistance to folks that have had damage? guest: you could have written that article about a half-dozen hurricanes i have been involved in. is aftermath of the storm bureaucracy you have to wade through. one of the challenges i had was trying to reorient. we have so many moving parts, whether we have insurance. fema says it is based upon a demonstration of needs. congress did not intend that fema would be the first payee. at, do you you look have insurance, do you qualify

for a small business administration loan? if you do and you had eligible losses, what can fema do? fema only provides reimbursement for uninsured losses. when there is not another way, whether a law or other program that can meet that need. next up is vivian in california. caller: good morning. i would like to remind america that ever since president trump took office, he promised he was going to do away with the affordable care act. he has worked on that for some time and we >> press secretary kayleigh mcenany, briefing orders. your watching live coverage on c-span. >> when the democratic city in chaos has the trump help.stration, pieces of washington, d.c., new york, seattle, minneapolis, kenosha,