we had 300 people killed, 3000 people wounded. and we found ourselves, two days later, with the first win division in the seventh infantry division in los angeles to quell the riots. and we discovered that all the individual cities had their on police and fire departments, but none of them had communications that they could talk to each other. so we had to provide the interoperable communications. but we also had a huge a language pis when you tell a fireman fire, that is a different meaning than when you tell a marine fire. so the whole exchange of lexicon and working together, the importance of that, i said personally i would never liked this -- never like to see this kind of situation happen again. it really turns out that the military was actually put in charge of that operation.

and i think it was not good for the relationships in the count of los angeles or anything else. so i said, never again. well, this kind of drill that we're going through here, working together with the civilians and the military, i can assure you, at one time in our future, we're going to be glad that we have done this. so that is my personal story gang of whites think this is so important. we are really blessed in the last that is my personal story of why i think this is so important. the mayor has a very busy schedule running the city and county of san francisco. but he is here and it's going to make some opening remarks because the mayor ed lee, if you would please come forward. since the department of emergency management is concerned about safety, i will ask you to come up these stairs and give us some remarks. please help meet welcome mayor ed lee.

[applause] >> well, good morning. welcome to sunny san francisco. thank you again, general, for your work as chair of our fleet regas association but you haven't really done a tremendous job. i wanted to add to your personal story. you know, i was sent over by former mayor gavin newsom to new orleans a few years ago, and we study what had happened there, and we realized that one of the things that had occurred in new orleans was a breakdown between city government and the neighborhoods, and such that when the hurricane hit and the flooding happened, so many people left the city, and then they did not come back. because there was no relationship between local government and many of the neighborhoods and many of the

residence. that lesson burned in my mind for a very long time. so it is that much more important, general, that when you put this fleet we together, that you made a disaster preparedness a thing -- the inme vision to the celebration of our armed forces. you have not only touch our city government, but you have helped me touch every neighborhood in this city. that is what we need to do in all of our cities. so thank you very much, general, for your leadership on this. thank you. [applause] i also wanted again our honorary chair, former secretary schulz. you have been such a great leader here. i want to thank you for putting this together. i know senator feinstein could not be here, that p is extremell in reminding us that we owe a great debt of gratitude to our

armed forces in the city. i'm not to thank our chief protocol officer for welcoming the officials and visitors here as well. i also want to thank captain harnden again for an impressive ship we have here today. you are occupying the space that in a couple years will hold the ships that will raise at the america's cup 34. it will be right here. some of the team ships will be located right here. for now, this is a great occupancy of this particular pier. i look forward to this afternoon when i can see all the equipment located up the stairs as the sun comes shining up. every year, the fleet week is of course paying tribute to the women and men and are proudly serving in our navy and our coastguard and our marines, and is remarkable that in recent years, this week has developed into a much more than just the sight and sound of the parade of ships and the blue angels.

the newly established focus on disaster preparedness is an invaluable in addition to our city. since 2004, our city has conducted approximately 100 exercises with the leadership of our department of the marjah thing management. additionally, approximately 250 training exercises, workshops city-wide, have been conducted with first responders and other key city officials and many of these training and exercises have gone well beyond our government agencies. they now agree non-government, a eighth-based, and community- based organizations, businesses, and schools. we have revamped our city's outdoor public warning system, using homeland security funding. and today, there are 109 sirens with voice and tone capabilities located throughout the city.

as part of our regular exercise on tuesday afternoons in our afternoon testing, we record announcements that are in english, followed by spanish and chinese in some of the areas that we have also enacted alert, saidsf anaya personal use on a weekly basis, to make sure that things are correctly being sent out to all of our citizens who sign up. that text-based system delivered emergency information to cell phones, pda's, e-mail account, and 16,500 have signed up for a largesf. we had our award winning website, 72hours.org to help create emergency plans, bill disaster kids, and get involved in training before disaster occurred and volunteered to help out afterwards to that information is available in

english, spanish, chinese, russian, and vietnamese. in addition, we also have a fun website, a website called quakequizsf.org. it's as the knowledge of what to do when an earthquake struck at home, driving, public transit, or even at the beach or at work. we have also enhanced our preparedness to throughout the city departments, using homeland security funds to conduct training, planning, and exercises, as well as bridges valuable in equipment. since 2003, san francisco and the bay area region have received approximately $322 million in home and security grants for that training and equipment. some of our other major a compliment stock -- accomplishments include renovating the emergency operations center, adding state of the art technology and

equipment. we have continued to revive our disaster council, which i had, and expanding the council to include not only our emergency management partners, but the nonprofit community, labor, and business associates. purchasing major emergency response equipment, using homeland security grants, that include field care clinton costs -- clinics and kicked -- care shelters. i have been training people to help our department of public health build those filled care clinics in precisely the time it takes in a very quick fashion. we're training people and volunteers to do that exactly, and we have urged the national weather service designation for storm-ready and tsunami-ready designations. in addition to these efforts, to the essential that we all work together and share the best practices and resources as to

how to better prepare and respond to emergencies. this one that half-day seminar is truly unique learning and relationship building opportunity to all of us. representatives from a broad range of agencies at local, state, and federal levels have come together for this seminar and for the tabletop exercise that was conducted by our dem earlier this month. we're getting to know each other but individually and organizationally in advance of the next disaster. that is what we really want to be able to emphasize the most. we need to do more in advance. we need to prepare people in advance. we need to keep practicing, because every time we looked around, new people are coming into the city. there are additional immigrant who do not speak english as their national language. their new neighborhoods in our neighborhood that are always being developed. we need to get them all involved. we need to involve everybody. that is why i am so proud to

have at this effort and to join secretary george schulz, the major come in all the volunteers in fleet week to join in the effort to make sure we do our best, and this seminar is that focus. thank you very much, and i hope you enjoy your stay here today. thank you. [applause] he a >> is also my boss, which does not mean those two have anything to do with each other. you will read his biography in the program, so i will not

insult you by reading it, but let me point out a few things that it does not explicitly say. he is, by every stretch of the imagination, a scholar, a gentle man, a combat-pror, a dedicated naval officer, and what we have determined, a true visionary leader. it is an honor that i have to work for admiral walsh. it is not the first time we have had an opportunity to work together, and hopefully it will not be the last. without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, the commander of the u.s. pacific fleet, admiral patrick walsh. [applause] he >> thank you. and thank you for the opportunity to join you here today. what a privilege to be able to follow the table top exercise discretion and the presentation

of remarks by the governor. as i think about the work that you are embarked on and the type of steps that you would like to take in the continuum of preparation for natural disasters and the response that you would take as responsible officials, think of the next presentation as an opportunity for a case study. think about the questions that leaders need to answer in times of crisis. what will be unique and different about our discussion in this operation was that this was not one singular event. it was a series of cascading crises, aggravated by hundreds

and then eventually thousands of aftershocks. it is continually challenged those who were in positions of responsibility in ways -- in complex areas that were very, very hard to anticipate. i think one question that is important to ask is how do leaders prepare themselves for a crisis situation, and i think what you heard here this morning is that whether or not you are prepared is one question, but you should assume that you are going to have to deal with situations in time-critical crisis response scenarios. next slide, please. i am here today to represent the u.s. pacific fleet, a fleet that has about 120,000 people, 180 ships, two dozen aircraft, 44

submarines, six carrier strikers, and we will talk about how we have organized our selves to respond to the crisis in japan. in the course of the previous two years of this assignment, we have been involved in a six humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. super typhoons in the philippines, vietnam, taiwan. earthquakes in samoa, christchurch, new zealand, chile, operation in japan. on average, what we are seeing in the ring of fire is about every six to eight weeks, a calamity, a natural disaster. in the case of operation tomodache, the reference point that i it would be very helpful for those who want to study this

is to go back and look at what nova and the public broadcasting service has done in terms of collecting now scientific measurable data, and one of the points that comes out in that 60-minute documentary is that in terms of instrumentation, scientists now know exactly what happened, where it happened. and then, in your case study sort of approach, you can now test the earthquake response plan that you have with the sort of scenarios and the variables that we were having to contend with in this crisis. the account weren't signs of the fleet were represented by the pictures, and typically we focus on the right-hand side of the charge, but what is embedded inside this group is an organization that has learned how to sustain itself at sewa

for extended time spans. embedded in that is an understanding of how to work logistics, and understanding to how to respond to lift requirements, and understanding of command and control. the plea today -- the fleet today has people who have strong technical competence in being able to respond and answer those sorts of questions. the fleet today is more mature and more seasoned because of the forward-deployed in nature of our operations. and we can apply that in the lessons that we have learned, and i think what you'll recognize is a very adaptable force. so this is what japan looked like before 2:00 p.m. on march 11, 2011. what you see at the top of the chart is the question the dai-

ichi power plant -- the fukushima power plant. on the left-hand side is sendai airport. on the other side, any japan. this is a bird's-eye view of what the tsunami looked like --

so as approximately 2:45 p.m. in the afternoon, what we now know is that a 20-meter way -- wave hit

the prefecture', ands in the course of that, located approximately 125 miles off the coast at a depth of about 20,000 feet, the eurasian plate and the pacific plate came in contact with each other. pressures had been building up since the 17th century. and in the release of that energy displaced a very large volume of water, which resulted in a a 60 meter wave traveling at the speed of an airplane. 2:45 in the afternoon, kids were in school. parents were at work. immediately be had a humanitarian situation where families were displaced. this was a 9.1 magnitude

earthquake that change to the tilt of the earth's axis. for those that were in tokyo at the time, they experience, as you would expect, a severe shock. the buildings held up. the architecture and engineering held in place. there were provisions in place for tsunami. of what no one expected in the course of this disaster was the coastline to drop. when the coast line dropped more than 1 meter, it changed the title characteristics of the wave. the wave reached 6.5 miles inland. almost like an egg beater. when it reached inland, it grabbed everything that it could and drag it out to sea. it resulted in this incoherent

picture of ships on top of buildings, buildings and out at sea, and over 1 million families left without power. so, now we are looking at pictures of a destructive scale never before witnessed. notice how we have captured this slide here. this is what we know. the lesson that we pass along is that it is important to understand what we do not know. we are looking at the water as it comes into the power plant. as that wave hits, fukushima loses its primary, secondary, and tertiary power supply for the reactors. and there are six of them at

fukushima. four were in operation. it is this series of cascading casualties that now first responders felt behind it is the course of the events with it the aftershock that continue to challenge the engineers who were attempting to restart water circulation systems to keep the power plants under control. by the time the joint support force arrived from honolulu, 90 people from my headquarters, are arriving in support of the japanese self-defense force, we had explosions because of hydrogen buildup in the individual reactors. we had buildings that had collapsed. we had the fukushima 50. they were dedicated, loyal engineers and workers at the

plan -- plant, attempting to keep the temperatures and conditions under control. it was a disaster that all of our national leadership said we would throw everything we have got at it. next slide. it is important to understand of what we did not know. we did not know the full extent of the damage. we did not know the full impact of the tsunami. there were entire population centers affected by this. in many of these prefectures that we went to, one of the first things we said was that there was a complete loss of the mayor's office. the complete loss of the municipal leadership installations and buildings. people were having to land on their feet, figuring out where they go. in addition to the isolated

communities, we needed to assess the infrastructure that we had in place. looming in the background was the nuclear crisis. this is where information became critically important. everyone was aware that their work risks, but they did not know what they were. the important thing was that we were available to help japan in any way that we possibly could. with technical expertise, with equipment. the challenge becomes, where do you begin? the japanese word for the operation is friend. what you are looking at here is how we presented forces and ourselves as a joint work force. as the governor talked about, it

is very important to have someone in charge. i very strongly agree with that. he highlighted the role that the military must play. as a joint force, we worked with ngo's, the government of japan ministries, and our counterparts in the self-defense force. it was unity of effort, not necessarily unity of command. that was the theme for the command and control architecture that resonated so strongly with the people of japan. the military response offers the rapid capability to fill in the gaps. there are military organizational methods that are very adaptable. what you are looking at here is how we divided up the operation. the mission.

the first was a focus on humanitarian assistance. the other was a focus on consequence management. critically important in this discussion was the identification of the lead federal agency for us. it was u.s. aid. what they provided for us was an avenue for funding. for direct contact with the government of japan. direct contact with the u.s. embassy. what that does, it helps to establish policy and guidance. for those who are looking at ways to now think of these sorts of operations as case studies in which you can test your ideas with the state of california and how you would respond, i would strongly endorsed that you look at policy and guidance. that is something that cannot be

assumed away. as you go from the local level to the municipal level, then the state level, and where you plug in with the federal government, this for assumption that we are on the same page and working off the same set of standards is something on which i reach out. to the extent that we were dealing with a contaminated, radiological environment, it was important to have a nuclear regulatory commission. it plugged into the washington, dc environment. the technical expertise that resided in the department of energy. working closely with the government of japan and the power co. in tokyo. what this brings to us now, with an understanding of the role

that we need to play, it is an identification of whether there are gaps in the role that was needed. how to apply the military instrument is important for military leaders. we can help to optimize the approach the two are trying to take. for us, there was this sense that we were behind. i would suggest that, in the case of a crisis that continues and insurers for the length of time that this did, the roles that we were trying to play was how to anticipate the next problem. feedbac[feedback] the way that this played out, there was contamination in the atmosphere, followed by contamination of the food

supply. then there was the water that was running into the ocean. so, our discussions, both with the nrc and the government of japan, how do we understand and characterized assistance to develop a common operating picture for understanding. how do we talk about this? what messages do we give to the population? the challenge was that we had different levels of understanding of these technical issues. that there was disagreement within the technical community in terms of exposure and risk. the reason there were differences of opinion, there were different standards. the world health organization has a standard. the center for disease control has a standard. again, as you tabletop this, it is important to think through, what will you