BY R. DAVID PAULISON
Then Acting Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency R. David Paulison was interviewed by Fire Engineering’s Editor in Chief Bobby Halton in Washington, DC, in February 2006. Following are Paulison’s insights and observations and responses to questions posed during the interview.
Paulison Introductory Remarks: I hope to share here just some of my observations and thoughts regarding the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) response to the most expensive hurricane-related natural disaster in American history. I am hoping to address some of the most commonly asked questions as they relate to my brother and sister firefighters. First, I am continually asked about pre-Katrina preparations: Did we have a plan in place? I know that FEMA had a plan to respond to the regions that Katrina was anticipated to affect. I feel it safe to say FEMA had anticipated a Category 4 or 5 storm. I wasn’t part of the initial response; however, I think, in looking back on Katrina and in light of the lessons learned, we are now even more prepared.
FE:What level of response was FEMA prepared for? Were any assets prepositioned?
Paulison: FEMA had response plans and resources dedicated to this hurricane before it made landfall, resources which, based on previous experience, would have provided a good beginning to the response and recovery efforts. FEMA expected a Category 4 or 5 storm, so we had prepositioned a tremendous amount of equipment; hundreds of tractor-trailer loads of food, water, and ice; urban search and rescue teams; and disaster medical assistance teams (DMATs). This was a standard predeployment action for our agency, just as a fire department would preposition resources at a large sporting event in its jurisdiction. If the event goes well, you return the assets; if not, you are ready to respond quickly where you anticipate needing them. Because of initial reports of the potential size and scope of Katrina, FEMA had sent a considerable amount of supplies and manpower. As I look back at FEMA’s initial prepositioning of resources, it is clear we expected, in terms of need, what we’d see in normal level 4 or level 5 hurricanes. I say normal; however, clearly, they’re all somewhat different. The FEMA pre-event needs assessment was for a standard level 4 or 5 hurricane. That’s what the FEMA system expected to see.
FE: What did FEMA expect to encounter going into the Katrina response? What unique problems, unanticipated issues, and circumstances did FEMA encounter?
Paulison: I think what FEMA didn’t expect was the failure of the levees. The large and stranded population in the Superdome was a good example of a few of the things FEMA had not expected, ending up with 20,000 to 30,000 people in the Superdome (probably nobody will ever know the exact number) with no food, no water, and very little security. We did not expect the staggering number of people that showed up at the convention center. We did not expect to end up evacuating entire hospitals. We needed to assist thousands of patients, many of them invalids, from hospitals and nursing homes. That’s not what FEMA normally does, but we ended up in this role. We ended up doing air lifts, which we don’t normally get involved in.
The levees were a point of failure. Although we had preincident information that there was a probability of flooding, we had assumed that that would happen if a storm were to stall over the city of New Orleans. Failure of the levees was a possibility; however, we had assumed it would be the result of a stalled continuous downpour.
The resultant issues surrounding our need to organize the largest rescue efforts ever undertaken in our country stalled some of our other more routine efforts, as resources and manpower were shifted to rescue the trapped and stranded Americans in New Orleans. These efforts were further complicated by the lack of infrastructure and access, which prevented the immediate insertion of our ground-based forces. The geographic enormity of this event is also worth mentioning here: FEMA had an area of response of 90 square miles.
We, as thousands of other Americans, found our agency doing things we had never done before. I know now that this agency, FEMA, will face more and more challenging events and that we will be challenged to do things that we may not have seen yet.
FE: Much regarding the FEMA operations was outstanding. Much seemed less than acceptable. How would you rate the overall performance of FEMA resources?
Paulison: I want to mention one of the truly heroic things that happened. Most Americans have never heard about it. I do so because thousands of these stories need to be told. Regular Americans, including volunteer and career firefighters, were heroic during and after the response operations, and are even today, in reacting and responding to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
One of my favorite stories has to do with the men and women who keep America supplied every day. This story will let me honor and give credit to some of the FEMA 18-wheel truck drivers. The story that there was no food and no water in the Superdome was somewhat inaccurate. We had four tractor-trailer loads of food and water that made it to the Superdome in the middle of the storm. Remember, this was a type 4 hurricane, the worst one ever. We had, I think, seven truck drivers who started out; four ended up making it all the way. Ordinary Americans, at the risk of their own lives, delivered four loads of food and water to their brother and sister Americans trapped and in need. It is just that simple to Americans: We will risk everything to help our fellow Americans.
These are some of the efforts that made a difference, albeit some small individual acts, but they were all highly significant in light of the tremendous personal risks. So, we were able to supply some food and water there-not an overabundant supply, but there was some there for everybody.
I’m extremely proud of the FEMA employees. I’ve been in public service 35 years, and I have never come across a more dedicated bunch of people. If people knew how small we were-fewer than 2,500 people spread across this whole country, about 1,800 employees here and within 10 regions. We also have the 3,500 disaster assistance employees. That is the size of FEMA-to handle an event like this.
We’re still getting beat up over issues, but I’m beginning to get very thick-skinned and to deal with the criticism without taking it personally, because, quite frankly, we are all here for the right reasons. I’m not making excuses for some of the mistakes we made; we’re going to fix them and move on, but I’m very proud of the employees here.
An incredible number of unusual and unique things happened that overwhelmed FEMA’s system during the Katrina and Rita events. A couple of things happened during Katrina that had never happened in the history of this country perhaps, and definitely never in the history of FEMA. I was the fire chief during Hurricane Andrew (in Florida). We evacuated about 2.3 million people. All but about 10 to 11 percent of those people could go back home again. We had about 250,000 in houses that were uninhabitable, so they could not go home. That was one of the biggest disasters we had in America in a long time.
If you fast forward to Hurricane Katrina, just about the same number of people were evacuated, perhaps a little less, out of Louisiana anyway-2 million to 2.1 million people-and 1.9 million of them were homeless. So, 93 percent to 94 percent of our fellow Americans were homeless. We’ve never had to deal with that many evacuees at any one time.
FEMA normally houses between six thousand and eight thousand people a year. Those are normal disasters-hurricanes, tornados, floods, earthquakes, brush fires, and all the things we deal with all year long. Last year in Florida, we ended up housing 20 thousand families. That was the pinnacle of what FEMA had ever done in its history.
In this particular case, we had hundreds of thousands of people displaced, 400 thousand suddenly homeless people who needed FEMA’s assistance in securing housing. We ended up with, I think, 290-some thousand in temporary shelters. Today, we have practically nobody in temporary shelters, and we’re down to less than 20,000 families in hotels. Within the next month or so [from the date of this interview], we will have all these people out of hotels and into apartments, single-family homes, duplexes, and decent types of housing. To make this disaster easier on our affected citizens, FEMA paid out $529 million to hotels alone. Total housing-related assistance costs for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in all the Gulf States were about $6.6 billion. That includes all the people in apartments, those who received checks to repair their homes, plus all the housing we provided. FEMA is going to take its lumps, but no one can deny that in the end FEMA got the job done.
When I’m asked if there are things that FEMA did that were outstanding, I think that was one of the highlights. I know we received a lot of criticism related to people who needed trailers where they wanted them, but we have probably 75,000 trailers and mobile homes on the ground. I think of the number of people we ended up housing-admittedly, it was ugly in some places-but we got it done, and we had to make up our rules as we went along. Maybe “rules” isn’t the right word; managers would say “processes,” just simply how we were going to get the job done. We had to change courses three or four times because we had never done this before and nobody else had ever done this before. So I think that the relocation and housing effort was a tremendous success. I feel our agency has done a remarkable job.
FEMA was able to register more than three million people, through the Web or our (1-800) 621-FEMA (3362) number. This total far exceeded the capacity of our system. And quite frankly, I am still amazed that our IT people were able to hold that thing together, to keep it from collapsing. We were registering 150,000 to 200,000 people a day. Our system was designed to handle only 20,000 a day.
But, we have more work to do. These people are going to need our attention and care for a period of time. But I think that considering the amount of time we had and the resources that FEMA normally has, the agency has done an outstanding job. People are going to disagree with that. And there are some things that we didn’t do well. But as far as the overall picture, we’ve done something no other agency has ever done before.
FE: What lessons did FEMA learn from Katrina in terms of response to large-scale events?
Paulison: There were a lot of lessons learned; there is no question about it. A lot of things did not go as they should have gone. One was visibility of what was happening on the ground. There was a lack of situational awareness from the field back to headquarters and between the federal government, the state, and the local government. That was a big issue. You didn’t know where the needs were, and you didn’t know where to move commodities. That was very rough. The communication system we had in place was not what it should have been, and we’re taking steps to make sure that it works in the future.
Another troubling issue was our logistical supply train. We had plenty, and I mean plenty, of supplies of food and water and ice. What we didn’t have was the ability to track it and control it and redirect it. So if we sent out, let’s say, a tractor-trailer load of food and water from a particular site, we did not know where it was until it got to where it was supposed to be. Regrettably, in many cases, by the time it got to the original destination, it wasn’t needed there, and we had to send it somewhere else and then somewhere else.
There was a lot of perceived confusion about what we were doing on the ground with our commodities. There are technologies available today to help us track our commodities very effectively. FEMA just doesn’t have that stuff in place. If Wal-Mart and Fed Ex and UPS and Target and Home Depot can do it, we can. They know where their commodities are, they know where they are every minute. We should be able to do that. We are working to fix these things to make this whole system run a lot more smoothly.
FE: Did the state of Louisiana share any of its Hurricane Pam scenarios with FEMA? Was FEMA aware of any projections? Do you feel resources were available to the State of Louisiana for an event of this magnitude?
Paulison: We have been asked repeatedly if FEMA was part of the Hurricane Pam simulation. In fact, FEMA was actually part of that Pam scenario. Having participated, we had knowledge of what the potential could be for a worst-case-scenario hurricane in New Orleans. We used this information to assess how some of the population would respond and how we could find them. FEMA will continue to participate and assist in the modeling of future potential disasters. We gain tremendous advantage by participating in scenarios and exercises. However, the final report of this exercise was not yet published prior to Katrina; the exercise did assist the folks on the ground who had participated.
FE: What is the future role of federal on-scene assistance? Is there a public misperception that federal authority supersedes local authority?
Paulison: There are a lot of separate and critical issues FEMA has to deal with in regard to incident management. These issues are all associated with some degree of accountability for preparedness. We have to deal with the question of where does preparedness lie? My position is that it lies in four different places. It lies at the federal government. We have to be prepared. We have to do a better job of making sure we are capable of responding to anything that comes along, whether it’s a natural disaster or a man-made event or anything else. We can never be satisfied with where we are. We must and shall continue to improve.
The state has to be prepared because all of our supplies flow through the state. That’s how our system is set up. If the state’s not prepared to handle the situation, we are immediately at a disadvantage. When we deliver commodities and the state doesn’t have the wherewithal to be able to distribute them, the blame comes back to FEMA, but the breakdown could be at the state level. This is not to say we will not help states that cannot help themselves. We will. We just need to be continually encouraging states to be prepared for worst-case situations.
The locals have to be prepared. The local communities have to do more than just wait for us. They cannot be comfortable with just sitting there. They’ve got to be proactive. They should have backup food and water. The local system must have emergency housing. The local authorities must ensure a continuity of operations and have all those types of things in place.
The last piece, and maybe the most important piece, is individual preparedness. FEMA has always said that a family has to be able to take care of itself for three or four days. This is for a couple reasons: (1) It could take help that long to get there because of road conditions, weather, or the magnitude of the event; and (2) if a family is prepared and takes care of itself, that means the first responders don’t have to respond there. They can go to someone who really needs help.
That inability to care and support oneself was one of the things that overwhelmed us in Hurricane Andrew. Our department went from running 400 to 500 calls a day to 4,000 to 5,000 a day. Many of those calls should not have been necessary. Just recently, Hurricane Wilma went through South Florida, where my home is. My wife and daughter were there. People were standing in line for food and water six hours after the storm. Ironically, there was water, running tap water. Yet, people were standing in line to get FEMA water and food and ice. People were using FEMA resources unnecessarily when perhaps there were other people who really needed these resources and didn’t have access to them. Those who should have been able to care for themselves took away from those who needed the help.
To ensure a successful and effective response to a disaster, these four pieces have to fit together. And if we, FEMA, do our job and the state does its job and the local community does its job and the individuals take responsibility for their own families, this whole system, regardless of what type of disaster it is, is going to work much, much better.
FE: Do you anticipate a major overhaul in how we currently deploy FEMA resources and teams in light of Hurricane Katrina? Is the solution to add more teams or integrate and coordinate state teams better? Is there any credibility to the rumors of a possible inclusion of the United States Coast Guard?
Paulison: As firefighters, we always evaluate our experiences to see what needs to be changed or modified to produce a better response next time. It’s obvious that the scope of work and responsibility of our urban search and rescue teams has spread far beyond what was originally envisioned. The teams were developed to respond to collapse and conditions that result from earthquakes or explosions. The teams were ideal for the response to the Pentagon, to New York City on September 11, 2001, and even to the plane crash in Pennsylvania. Now, these teams deal with floods; they deal with a whole bunch of different issues. FEMA is now aware of these regional issues when constructing teams regionally.
The question of how many teams we need is always going to be in discussion; I don’t know that we need to expand the number of teams today. Perhaps we need to look at giving them a greater capacity, a greater functionality. We never ran out of teams during Katrina. Today, with FEMA being inside the Department of Homeland Security, we have immediate access to assets we may not have had before-the Coast Guard, for example. The Coast Guard rescued tens of thousands of people off the roofs with their vast fleet of helicopters, aircraft, and boats. Urban search and rescue teams rescued thousands of people also. So, a combination of all of this is what is going to work for the future. I see us tying DHS with the local responders much, much more closely, with our planning, our training, and our exercises.
Our relationship with the Coast Guard in disaster response will become richer. The Coast Guard is a tremendous outfit. It is geared to operate under the same type of incident command system we use. When one looks closely at how it operates, how it addresses the mission, it is very, very similar to what we as first responders do. It is a natural fit. The Coast Guard has excellent leaders. For example, Admiral Allen eventually organized the whole response over the three states as the recovery went on. He did an excellent job. So, to answer folks who may be wondering, yes, the Coast Guard has to be a big player in this whole response and recovery piece.
FE: Do you think we have to take a completely different view to be effective? Is it time to begin to plan for and reorganize for a totally new approach to major future possible disasters, such as major earthquakes and possible tsunamis?
Paulison: We will be working on our public education in terms of defining what FEMA’s role and responsibilities are in disaster response. The fire service and the public both have some misconceptions about FEMA’s roles and responsibilities. We are going to do a better job of laying out what FEMA’s capabilities and capacities are, managing those expectations, and explaining what we do and don’t do. FEMA is not a replacement for the local first responder organization. Our job is to help coordinate federal assets, making sure the state has the things it needs so the resources can get down to the local government.
We had some issues with emergency support functions (ESF-functions we mobilize to conduct specific activities in a disaster). Expectedly, some of them worked extremely well. Some of them didn’t work as well as they should have. The success of ESF is often a matter of having the available local resources to provide services. During Katrina, several Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) requests were issued; we had some issues with that system. The EMAC is an extremely valuable tool in disaster management. This is one place where we need to better coordinate and organize so that if an asset is deployed through the EMAC system, there is a mechanism that integrates our missions’ assignments. Then FEMA can make sure those requesting resources have the supplies they need.
Some EMAC resources are not self-sufficient. We recommend that any deployed asset be self-sufficient. When we send our US&R teams, we send them as self-sufficient. We don’t want them to be dependent or to be a burden on the local governments. So we send them in where they can take care of themselves for three or four days until we can get a logistical supply train set up. The EMAC system in the future needs to work the same way. EMAC deployment and provisioning is another area in which we need to do a better job next year. We need better mission coordination. Again, overall, considering the magnitude of this event and the mass migration that took place, there were a lot of bumps along the way, but overall we got the job done.
The American firefighters helped FEMA by responding to an unexpected request-firefighters from around the country who didn’t want to self-deploy still kept asking to be used. FEMA put together an experimental program on the fly. We wanted 4,000 community relations people who could be deployed quickly and did not have to have background checks. Here were firefighters, people who were easily trainable and could work out in some very austere conditions. Deputy U.S. Fire Administrator Charlie Dickinson and I decided to use the members of the fire service for the community relations function. We put out a call to the American fire service, and it responded.
We assembled our 4,000 people right away; 2,000 were available within just a few days. I think the issue was that many of the people who got into this program wanted to be deployed as firefighters and rescuers. That wasn’t what the program was for; it was for community relations work. We needed people we could trust, people on whom we could depend and who could be used immediately.
I considered the program a tremendous success. We had a handful of people who complained about it because they got out there and they weren’t used as they thought they were supposed to be used. We will have to do a better job of making sure when we do this again that they understand very clearly that it’s not about coming in with bunker gear, axes, and a fire hose. It’s about coming out to help people get plugged into the system, to better understand what FEMA does, to help them get in contact with FEMA, and to get out the information of what needs to be done.
I was very proud. The people running our joint field offices (JFOs) begged me to send more firefighters. They said these firefighters will and can do anything. They said they go out to do community relations work all day, then they come back to the JFO, crank up the barbecue, and cook dinner for everybody and clean up the dishes. If anything breaks, they can fix it. They said they had never had a group of people like this come into the JFOs and do the things they can do. Yes, I am bragging about the American firefighter again. We here at FEMA assure you that the Firefighter Community Relations program will continue. It was a success. The only thing we need to do is make sure people understand why they’re coming. Who else to better to deal with people who’ve gone through a disaster than firefighters, who deal with it every day? They were perfect for the job.
FEMA is going to improve and the fire service is going to help us be faster and to deliver better service tomorrow and into the future. It is time to take the lessons learned and make improvements. It is important that everyone recognizes that we are one team with one mission and one goal: to serve and protect the citizens of the United States of America.
R. DAVID PAULISON has been nominated by President Bush to be director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; he was awaiting Senate confirmation as of press time. He has been acting director since September 2005. He had been U.S. Fire Administrator since December 2001. He served as the director of the Preparedness Division of the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate/FEMA in the newly created Department of Homeland Security from 2003-2004. Before joining FEMA, Paulison, who has 30 years of fire/rescue services experience, was chief of the Miami-Dade (FL) Fire Rescue Department, where he also oversaw the Dade County Emergency Management office. He is a certified paramedic and, as fire chief, oversaw the Miami-Dade Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. His emergency management experience includes Hurricane Andrew and the crash of ValuJet Flight 592. He is also past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs and holds positions in several professional associations. He has a bachelor of arts degree from Florida Atlantic University and completed the Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2004, he received the Mason Lankford Fire Service Leadership Award of the Congressional Fire Service Institute and the LeRoy Collins Distinguished Alumni Award.
