WOODBURY P. FOGG, P.E.
ON BEHALF OF
NATIONAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
ASSOCIATION
BEFORE the SENATE COMMITTEE ON
ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
MARCH 12, 2002
Mr. Chairman, Ranking
Member Smith and Members of the Committee:
Thank you for
the opportunity to appear before you today to offer comments on the proposed
first responder program. My name is
Woody Fogg and I am testifying on behalf of the National Emergency Management
Association (NEMA). Most recently, I
served as the Director of the Office of Emergency Management for the State of
New Hampshire for the past four years.
As a member of NEMA, I have served as the Co-Chair for NEMA’s Terrorism
Committee.
NEMA’s members
include the directors of emergency management for all the states and
territories, who are responsible to their governors for disaster mitigation,
preparedness, response and recovery. This includes responsibility for terrorism
consequence management and preparedness.
Long before September
11, 2001, NEMA had established itself as a leader in providing input to
Congress and federal agencies on issues of domestic preparedness. States have been in the forefront of
preparing for and responding to all types of disasters, both natural and
man-made. We take an all-hazards
approach to disaster preparedness and have integrated our domestic preparedness
efforts into the proven systems we already use for dealing with both man-made
and natural disasters. We also
recognize clearly the value of prevention and mitigation in minimizing the
consequences of disasters and we incorporate those considerations in all our
efforts.
In
my testimony today, I’m going to make five key points about the proposed first
responder program:
1)
All efforts need to be
coordinated through the states;
2)
State and local
governments need programs to be flexible enough for personnel to manage;
3)
Standards must be
developed to ensure interoperability of equipment, communications, and
training;
4)
Mutual aid – both intrastate
and interstate -- is a key component to capacity building; and
5)
State and local
government must be fully, directly and continuously involved and consulted in
the development of the National Domestic Preparedness Strategy.
NEMA
supports federal efforts to increase emergency management capacity building at
the state, territory, and local level for personnel, planning, training,
equipment, coordination, and exercising. A significant federal commitment must be made to give state,
territorial, and local governments the tools to ensure adequate
preparedness. While states have
significantly increased their commitment to emergency management over the last
decade, states are struggling with budgetary issues and the increased
investments necessary to meet new demands.
State Coordination
All
efforts to increase emergency management capacity building must be coordinated
through the states to ensure harmonization with the state emergency operations
plan, ensure equitable distribution of resources, and to synthesize resources
for intra-state and inter-state mutual aid.
Also, the Stafford Act, which governs the way disaster assistance is
allocated, firmly and successfully uses states and Governors as the managers of
federal disaster relief funds for local governments which are over-taxed and
need assistance when disasters occur.
States understand the need to get funding to the first responders and
have long coordinated statewide and regionally to ensure adequate state
assistance to local governments for emergency preparedness and response. There is no question that most of the $3.5
billion proposed first responder grant funds need to get to police, fire
fighters, emergency medical workers, and other front-line local responders –
after all, disasters are local in nature.
The health community must not be forgotten and must be integrated into
all planning, training, and exercising under the state emergency operations
plan. We can effectively ensure this by
working through the states to build on the needs identified in the plans that
FEMA, the Department of Justice, and other agencies have required
statewide. Further, because this is a
national emergency and states are in difficult fiscal situations, we must we
wary of programs that would require significant matches. If a significant match is required, the
application of this initiative will only go to those agencies and governments
that can fiscally afford the match and not necessarily where the need is greatest.
Flexibility for Personnel to Manage the Program
State
emergency managers need to have a commitment for sustained federal resources
and the flexibility to insure the hiring and training of sufficient
professional personnel to manage the expanding antiterrorism programs. We are concerned that an influx of funding
programs from the federal government could detract from our “all hazards”
approach and we will have to turn our focus away from natural disaster
preparedness and response and thereby actually reduce overall preparedness and
efficiency. Building a statewide
(local, state and interstate) emergency management capability is key to
ensuring preparedness across the board.
Flexibility to use some of the first responder grants for personnel both
at the state and local level to manage the programs is critical to completing
the preparedness mission.
NEMA
has long advocated an increase in the only flexible source of federal emergency
management funding, the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG). EMPG is the only line item in the FEMA
budget that has not received an increase in the last decade, yet it is the only
consistent source of federal funding for state and local capacity
building. As an existing funding
stream, EMPG could be used to hire state and local staff to manage critical
programs and build the incremental emergency management capacity to prepare for
the first responder grants and the coordination that will be required execute
the program.
State
and local government emergency management is over-stressed and working to capacity
to address the new environment. We need
relief now, and in that vein we are requesting an additional $200 million in
funding for EMPG in the April supplemental appropriations package. In 2000, a NEMA survey of the states
revealed a $123 million shortfall in federal funding of state and local
emergency management programs. These
funds will be a down payment for addressing the needs of emergency management.
Standards
Standards
must be developed to ensure interoperability of equipment, communications, and
training across state, regional, and local jurisdictions. In terms of establishing voluntary minimum
standards for the terrorism preparedness programs of state and local
governments, NEMA offers itself as a resource in this area. Our organization, along with other
stakeholder groups such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the
International Association of Emergency Managers, National Governors’
Association, National League of Cities, International Association of Fire
Chiefs, and others, has developed and is implementing an Emergency Management
Accreditation Program (EMAP). EMAP is a
voluntary standards and accreditation program for state and local emergency
management that is based on NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) 1600
Standard for Disaster/Emergency Management and Business Continuity Operations
(an ANSI or American National Standards Institute approved standard) and FEMA’s
Capability Assessment of Readiness (CAR).
Consequence management preparedness, response and recovery standards are
being developed in conjunction with those for the traditional emergency
management functions. NEMA suggests
that these standards already being collaboratively developed through EMAP be
considered in the development of minimum standards for training, exercises and equipment. Additionally, EMAP acceptance would provide the natural
mechanism for federal and state agencies to meet the requirements of the
Government Performance Results Act (GPRA).
EMAP has already completed a pilot phase in North Carolina and North
Dakota and will begin receiving state program applications in April. Local pilots will begin this Spring.
Mutual Aid
Mutual
aid is a key to capacity building. A
proven system we need to take advantage of for all domestic preparedness
planning is the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC).
EMAC is an interstate mutual aid agreement that allows states to assist
one another in responding to all kinds of natural and man-made disasters. EMAC
offers a quick and easy way for states to send personnel and equipment to help
disaster relief efforts in other states. There are times when state and local
resources are overwhelmed and federal assistance is inadequate, inappropriate,
too far away or unavailable. Out-of-state aid through EMAC helps fill such
shortfalls. There are 46 states and two
territories that are members of EMAC and other states and territories are
considering joining. In response to 9/11,
emergency managers from several states provided technical assistance and personnel
support to New York through EMAC. A system like this enables experts and
specialized equipment to be used across jurisdictions and regions based on the
nature of a particular event. NEMA and
FEMA are currently working together to standardize resource typing. By having
commonly understood descriptions of resource packages, impacted jurisdictions
will know just what they are going to get when they request each standard
package.
Close coordination in the building of overall
capacity to deal with truly catastrophic events is the key to success in
assuring our nation’s preparedness against terrorism. One point that I would like to make is that one of the best
demonstrations of the need for better federal, state, private and local
coordination on a regional basis was the TOPOFF exercise in 2000. TOPOFF was a Congressionally mandated
“no-notice” national exercise that was designed to assess the nation’s crisis
and consequence management capabilities by exercising the plans, policies,
procedures, systems and facilities through Federal, State and local responses
to a challenging series of “no-notice”, integrated, geographically dispersed
terrorist threats and acts. Clearly,
one of the biggest issues was the question of who was in charge of the scene.
This held true in all of the venues --Portsmouth, Denver and Washington,
D.C. We need to ensure that those
valuable federal, state, local, and private relationships and trust are built
and exercised before a disaster. TOPOFF
was a valuable learning experience and we look forward to TOPOFF II, as well as
a continuing series of regional and national exercises to continually refine
and improve the system. Plans are
nothing without exercises to assess and develop their effectiveness.
There is a tested and
proven “All Hazards” emergency preparedness and response system in place which
integrates federal. Federal, State, local, and private organizations. We need to build upon and enhance that
system, not create a new one. States
must continue to serve as the bridge between the federal government and the
first responders at the local level in order to most effectively coordinate the
nation’s catastrophic response capabilities.
Domestic preparedness funding programs must be structured to allow local
and state emergency managers the flexibility to hire personnel needed to
effectively carry out these programs.
Equipment and training alone will not meet the goal.
NEMA asks Congress’
help in ensuring state and local emergency management is fully and effectively
represented in the development of the national domestic preparedness
strategy. Thank you for your commitment
to ensuring our nation is as ready as we can be.