among all of these storms depicted by a significant amount in terms of size of damage a thin hurricane retek which ranks second in the storm's among damage. i would like to show you the next graph and which is even more startling are the storms since 1851 to the present so when we in the gulf coast talk about the threat, it is real, it is frightening, and it is important for this committee and all committees of this congress to continue to focus as best we can on the sure thrashed of hurricanes that are getting more and more predictable. we know and can be better focused where they will hit and when they are hitting, unlike earthquakes although science is getting much better on earthquakes, and five years as well. we have gotten pretty good at predicting where the storms will hit. there is very little we can do immediately to stop them the most certainly we can prepare our people better for the threat to that they are facing. it is important for us to understand our capacity to deal with these real and on going and in some people's minds, ever strengthening threats and this is what this comm

had retek hit houston, which it did not, it hit close to houston, it's, you know, it was very interesting as someone might want to write what could have happened to the price of oil and gas had both the port of new orleans and port of houston and almost all offshore operations at that point would have been shot down for quite some time. that didn't happen but it would be an interesting research project. but what is your responsibility to the ports keeping them open and how did you will discuss that at your exercise and could you testify to that point, please? >> madam chairman, again, working with fema and i will give you an example what we did during hurricane ike last year we worked with coast guard through dhs and fema and fema requested an fabius ship be deployed into the gulf and the port of galveston was devastated by hurricane ike and there was 100 obstacles in the channel, and so the uss nassau was deployed there. we have any given day two ships on the east coast and to on the west coast primarily amphibious ships that can take on the tight q1 load, vessels out the back that can r