Segment 2 Of 2     Previous Hearing Segment(1)

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FEDERAL RESPONSE TO WEATHER RELATED DISASTERS IN NORTH CAROLINA

Friday, April 28, 2000
House of Representatives, Oversight, Investigations and Emergency Management Subcommittee, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Washington, D.C.

    The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in the Moore County Commissioner's Meeting Room, Second Floor, Historic Courthouse, Courthouse Square, Carthage, North Carolina, Hon. Wayne Gilchrest presiding.
    Mr. COBLE. [Presiding.]OK. Folks, as I was saying, as a result of the untimely and unexpected snowfall that devastated this area last year, that prompted many calls and inquiries to our office. And after the fact, it was suggested that a hearing be conducted to examine what went right and what went wrong.
    Now no one is here today to buggy whip anybody, but we are here to examine it, and this is a FEMA hearing. This hearing was originally scheduled to have been chaired by Congresswoman Tillie Fowler of Florida. Her best friend of 29 years died unexpectedly Wednesday, so she is attending her funeral today. Wayne Gilchrest, who resides on the eastern shore of Maryland, was called in at the last minute to chair this hearing, and I am told he is enroute as we speak. So when he gets here, I will surrender the gavel to him.
    But someone asked me the other day, said, what does Tillie Fowler, a Congresswoman from Florida, know about snow? I said, I do not know what she knows about snow, but she knows a lot about FEMA. This is not a snow hearing prompted by FEMA. This is a FEMA hearing prompted by snow. And with that in mind, that is—those are the issues that we are going to try to hammer out.
    We have two fine panels here, and if there are those in the audience or those who come subsequently who want to submit suggestions or ideas or comments, refer them to Dan Shulman, who sits to my right, who is Ms. Fowler's number one staffer on the subcommittee. And he will provide the appropriate mailing address for those interested in doing so. Oral testimony will be taken today only from the witnesses listed on the program, many of which you—I am sure that you have before you.
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     Let me enter into the record my formal statement. I appreciate Ms. Fowler having agreed to conduct this hearing, and I appreciate Mr. Gilchrest for having—at the last minute, trying to find his way to the Sand Hills. Hopefully he will get here soon. We extend our sympathy to Tillie and her family regarding the loss of her good friend during this difficult time. And we will welcome Wayne once he gets here.
    I want to thank those who have helped to make this hearing possible. First of all, the witnesses from Moore County, the state of North Carolina and FEMA who have taken time to come here today. Dan Shulman, the counsel to the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigation and Emergency Management of the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation Committee has worked diligently during the past several weeks to ensure a productive hearing, and I would be remiss, Dan, if I did not mentioned Missy Jo Branson from Thomasville. She is not a Sand Hillian but she is a Carolinian, and I think you would agree that she has worked favorably with you, Dan.
    This hearing could not have taken place without the cooperation as well of Ms. Joan Neale with the County Manager's office here in Carthage. And last, but not least, I would be remiss if I did not mention Mr. Steven Leiter with the law firm of Robbins May and Rich, and I think they are hosting lunches today for those of us who are involved in the hearing.
    On January 24th and 25th of this year, the state of North Carolina was hit by one of the worst winter storms in the state's history. The Sand Hills region was one of the most severely impacted areas with snowfall levels in excess of 20 inches. And incidentally, folks, many folks in the Congress said to me time and again—they all know that I have Moore County.
    Now it did not take the golfers in the Congress long to find out that I represent Pinehurst and Southern Pines, and they said to me—good morning, Sheriff, how are you—they said to me, why can those folks not respond better to snow? These were Congressmen from Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin—and I said to them, I said, those folks in the Sand Hills have probably—I may be wrong about this, I said, they probably had a cumulative total of five inches in the last seven years. And now all of a sudden they get devastated with 20—oh, I did not realize it did not snow more than that in the wintertime. So many folks did not understand why you all were coping with such difficulty down here.
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    The purpose of this hearing, as I said initially, is to receive testimony on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, FEMA's response to these storms and lessons learned from the experience that may help improve the government's response to future disasters. In the wake of this disaster, there are several issues that I hope we can explore during this hearing to improve upon the response and preparedness for the next disaster. Specifically, what can be done in the future to allow local and state emergency managers to utilize both personnel and equipment from Fort Bragg, and/or other military bases, in the disaster area.
    It seems to me there is a national interest served in responding to disasters of this nature, and the hard-working taxpayers of this county need to know—this county and this country—need to know that necessary Federal resources will be available to assist in emergency management efforts.
    I am also concerned about delays in the processing of the assistance requests by FEMA. It is my understanding that Moore County has yet to receive any reimbursement from expenses incurred as a result of these winter storms. Fortunately Moore County, it is my understanding, has adequate reserves to continue with its recovery efforts. However, this is not the situation for many local governments across our nation and across our state whose recovery efforts would be halted in the absence of timely reimbursements. I hope we can explore possibilities for improving this process as part of the hearing today.
    We understand that most state and Federal resources were stretched when these snowstorms hit as a result of the hurricanes that devastated our state in August and September. Mother Nature, however, does not necessarily appreciate the difficulties in responding to multiple storms simultaneously, and that is what we had to do. You all were responding to multiple storms simultaneously. And as a result, we should have effective and sufficient resources available to our citizens in the wake of such disasters regardless of the circumstances.
    In the past four years—and this unknown probably to no one in this hearing room—North Carolina has been the victim of six hurricanes, two winter storms, one flood and one tornado. Hopefully the knowledge and experience we gain in responding to these disasters will help ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated during future disaster recovery efforts.
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    Again, I appreciate those of you who have taken time to come here today. I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and I hope that our dialogue today will help to improve upon our nation's disaster recovery and response program. Someone said to me just a few moments ago, well, my gosh, we will never have another snowstorm like this down here. Well, you probably will not in my lifetime, but I see folks in the hearing room who are younger than I and it may happen in your lifetime. If it never happens in Moore County, it will inevitably happen somewhere.
    So if we can apply mistakes that were made here and correct those mistakes, if we can apply what was done in a timely and effective way here and prepare to repeat what was done properly, it will not be wasted effort.
    I would ask the first panel, if they will, to come forward and we will hear first from Michael Holden, who is the Chairman of the Moore County Board of Commissioners, who has just undergone a hectic tax season, I am sure, Mr. Chairman. We will next hear from David McNeill, the County Manager of Moore, then from Barry Britt who is the Director of Emergency Services. Now that is the only names that I have, but I think we have more—Tony Patnode, Director of Community Development. And finally, we will hear from John Frye, who is the Director of Financial Services. I think John is replacing another witness who was initially scheduled, am I right about that?
    OK. Well, it is good to have all of you here, gentlemen. If you all will come forward and take your seats. I do not know how Chairman Tillie Fowler conducts her hearings, but I will tell you all how I conduct mine in Judiciary. And if that suits you, fine, if it does not, fine, well, we can amend that process.
    We have written testimony from each of you, which has been thoroughly examined and will be re-examined. It is my hope, if you can, to limit your oral testimony to between five and seven minutes. Do you think that can be done? Is that going to cut any of you too short? If you all could do that and then we can—with our able court reporter here, we can examine that and then examine your written testimony again.
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    And again, I say it is good to be in Moore County. I appreciate what you all have done to bring us to this point, and I look forward to hearing from you. And Mr. Chairman, we will start with you.
TESTIMONY OF MICHAEL HOLDEN, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS, MOORE COUNTY; DAVID MCNEILL, JR., COUNTY MANAGER, MOORE COUNTY; BARRY BRITT, DIRECTOR OF EMERGENCY SERVICES, MOORE COUNTY; TONY PATNODE, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, MOORE COUNTY; AND JOHN FRYE, DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL SERVICES, MOORE COUNTY
    Mr. HOLDEN. Well, thank you.
    Mr. COBLE. And by the way, if you will, Mike, nobody will be keel-hulled or hung from the yardarm if you go beyond the seven minutes. But if you can within that time frame, I would be appreciative. Missy Jo, if you would be the unofficial time keeper.
    Of course, I know Chairmen of Boards of Commission are never long-winded, right? Go ahead, Mr. Chairman, good to have you all here.
    Mr. HOLDEN. Thank you. It is, as they say in Pinehurst, it is a great day here in Moore County. This is kind of—you know, we—even though it is raining and things like that, it is kind of like—as Pat Corslett says, it is kind of like being Scotland, so you have just kind of got to take it in stride.
    On behalf of the Moore County Board of Commissioners, we want to welcome you to Moore County. We hope your stay is enjoyable, and anything we can do to accommodate you, please let us know.
    Monday, January 24th, 2000 was a different matter. I have lived here all my life, my dad has lived here all his life, and we have never seen anything like that storm. It was something that no one I think alive today has even seen here. I have even had you are talking about people from other areas of the country, I have had people that I work with from Michigan, who have retired here from Michigan and areas like that said they had never seen a storm with quite the impact or quite a snowstorm that did quite the damage that this one did here in Moore County.
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    We were here conducting our meeting that night, and we were called away. Someone sent me a note said it was getting really bad. That was the first indication we had. When we left here, I was trying to get back to Southern Pines, I was not even sure we were going to get back home that night. It hit so quickly and by the time I got to Southern Pines, you could see the power grids going down all over town.
    Tuesday morning, we still had blizzard conditions here, no one had electricity, no one had phones, it was still snowing and by the time it quit, or later that morning, we had 16, 20 inches of snow on the ground.
    Those of us who have lived here or moved here in Moore County, we consider ourselves fairly self-reliant people. We think we can get along on our own, we can take care of ourselves. And you know, we are noted for being a community of fairly affluent retirees, so you would think we could get by on our own. When you have got no electricity, you have got no telephone, you have got no way of going anywhere and it is 15 degrees outside, it does not matter how much money you have got in the bank and what you are doing, it is a matter of survival. And that is kind of the situation that our folks here in Moore County found themselves in on Tuesday morning, January 25th. It was a matter of survival.
    My neighborhood in Southern Pines, on the other end of town of Southern Pines, it took five days to get the electricity back on. It was more than a week before our telephone service was restored. This was, for me and my family, it was an experience. But we have quite a few older people in our community, people who have health problems. It is dangerous, and it was a situation that needed a fairly quick response. And you know, our folks here in the county, we worked very hard. Our EMS people, our sheriff's department, we had many volunteers who—someone told me the other day, in one of our communities, the volunteer fire department went door-to-door, knocking on houses especially of the widows and folks like that, making sure everything was OK. And it was a critical time for all of us.
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    But all that we did, we still were not prepared. A small community like this is still not prepared for a storm like that. We needed help getting utilities back, getting our roads cleared, getting it so people could get to the doctors or get to grocery stores and things like that. One of the questions that we had, that our community had was, you know, our military can go all over the world providing humanitarian relief, kind of we were looking for. They can go all over the world providing humanitarian relief to countries everywhere, and we are next door. Southern Pines borders Fort Bragg Military Reservation, and we could not get any of that heavy equipment, any of that manpower that was really needed in a very short period of time to help our folks and allay some of the fears that some of our older people and like that had. So that is a critical concern that we had here in Moore County, that short-term kind of help that we needed and that four or five days that 90 percent of the county, I guess, was without electricity. It is a real concern.
    But we do appreciate the help of the Federal and state government, we appreciate you being here. The work of Carolina Power and Light, our utility company here, you know, those folks worked around the clock. It was amazing to see them outside my house at midnight putting up lines. We do appreciate all that.
    I think one of the things that I would like to get across to this committee is that, you know, our community historically has been fairly lucky. We have dodged the hurricanes that have come through North Carolina, the tornadoes, all those natural disasters. We never really had one here before that caused very much damage. But you think about this kind of snowstorm hitting a small southern community, it just goes to show you that there is not a community in the country anywhere that is really—there is some sort of natural disaster that can hit that community. And we have to be ready to respond to that and respond quickly with this manpower and equipment, because you know, for a short period of time, it is a critical issue.
    Mr. COBLE. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I think you are right, when you say that the utilities people, the CP&L folks, the telephone people, there was an editorial in the Pilot that commended those folks and they are to be commended.
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    I know when a storm like that—if this had been Boone or Blowing Rock, it would have been a no-brainer, because they are prepared for this. They have it frequently during the wintertime. But this caught you all on the blind side. And I think when these things happen—and Michael, you sort of touched on it—I think it brings out the best and the worst in people. The best for the most part. But there are going to be five percent of the people in society, folks, I do not care what you do, they are not going to be happy. Am I right or wrong, Mr. Manager? And when something like this occurs, then that makes this five percent even more onerous and more unbearable to be with. I am sure you all saw that five percent. But you probably saw the other 95 percent as well.
    I will recognize the County Manager now. But when you mentioned Fort Bragg—and the second panel will be able to address this probably in more detail, but I called Fort Bragg twice, and I think Mike called at least one time. And we were told that they could do nothing until the President signed the declaration of emergency. We will get into that in more detail later. But what makes that even more frustrating, Mr. Chairman, as you point out, that you are in the shadow of Fort Bragg. If it had been 500 miles away, it would have been a different story.
    But it was my belief, not having been here, and the emergency folks can address this, but I think the phone calls that I received, the two most pressing problems were, among the many problems, were the fallen trees and the inability to remove those fallen trees, the difficulty, and the snow removal. And as you pointed out, Chairman, that those two issues probably could have been resolved with dispatching the proper equipment from Fort Bragg. I am applying 20/20 hindsight, I will admit, but that is the purpose of the hearing. Thank you, Chairman.
    Mr. Manager, David.
    Mr. MCNEILL. Thank you, Mr. Coble, and we certainly appreciate you coming down here today to meet with us and we certainly want to thank you and your office and your staff for the help that you contributed to us in that week of January which none of us will forget.
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    And so I would like just to pick up a little bit from the Chairman there, to state that we feel like we have certainly a good emergency management plan here in Moore County. And you mentioned the six hurricanes that have come through or touched, or skirted North Carolina over the past—well, since Hugo, is the one I remember in 1987 that came just west of us. But each time one of those hurricanes approached the southeast, of course, we had plenty of time, we had several days to prepare and get ready, open shelters, have people to leave their homes, and we many nights staffed the emergency operation center during those hurricanes, and we had people to stay in shelters during those six events.
    But this time it was different. This storm was unexpected, and we were lucky from those hurricanes, we had them go east of us, we had them go west of us. But I think the Pilot pretty much summed it up when they put out this full-page edition, The Big One: Hurricane of Snow Paralyzes the Sand Hills. And we would like to submit this to you.
    Mr. COBLE. That will be accepted and made a part of the record.
    Mr. MCNEILL. The Pilot does a good job of keeping up with Moore County needs. And of course, I have a couple of other copies here of the after effects there.
    Mr. COBLE. David, let me just show this to you. I am sure you all remember having seen that, but that headline pretty well tells it all.
    Mr. MCNEILL. And here are two more editions that came out later talking about the massive power outage that we had, 62 homes. This was Friday of that week.
    Mr. COBLE. This too will be made a part of the record.
    Mr. MCNEILL. And another one now on Monday, January 31st, that most people now have their power restored, and now the clean-up starts here in Moore County.
    Mr. COBLE. So those three issues of the Pilot then will be made part of the record.
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    [The material referred to may be found in the subcommittee file:]

    [insert here]

    Mr. MCNEILL. I do not thing that we could—the best way we can—words cannot adequately describe what we went through with this particular storm, and so we have taken the liberty of showing some pictures. If we have your permission, we would just like to run through quickly——
    Mr. COBLE. Very well.
    Mr. MCNEILL. —some of the pictures that we took. Unfortunately, none of these pictures happened the day or two of the storm because we were stirring around doing everything else besides out taking pictures. So it was about the third or fourth day before we got out to start taking——
    Mr. COBLE. Well, you did not have the luxury of picture-taking outside, I guess.
    Mr. MCNEILL. It was not a priority. But if we could—Jason, if you would just start going through.
    If you would notice, this is January 29th, and some of the things we want to point out to you as you look through are the massive amount of pine trees that are destroyed in Moore County.
    Jason, you keep going because my clock is ticking over here. So keep going——
    Mr. COBLE. I repeat, David, I am not going to hurt any of you if you go over seven minutes.
    Mr. MCNEILL. Again, these are about five days after the storm hit on January 24th. Now you can see some Fort Bragg—not Fort Bragg, but National Guard people who came down to assist. Again, January 29th. Trees that are falling on the power lines, homes. You see utility crews that came from all over the country to help out.
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    And I should state here that Moore County is served by four utility companies. Carolina Power and Light, Randolph Electric, Central Carolina and PDE&C. And I can state without any reservation at all that we were in contact with the utility people constantly on a daily basis. Dan Powell from CP&L was a tremendous in keeping us up to date on where they stood. They held a news conference in Moore County on Wednesday after the storm, invited all the local media to come to hear exactly where their progress was on getting power restored. And the other three utility companies worked diligently, as the Chairman said, throughout the day.
    This was just highly unusual for this particular area. We had problems that night, as the storm hit, our emergency management coordinator, Steadman Meers, who works under Mr. Britt, I got in contact with him about 11:00 Monday evening, when I finally got home to Southern Pines to my home, there was a couple of hills I did not think I was going to make it up going home. And he called me to let me know he was on his way in his four-wheel-drive to Carthage to open up our emergency operations center. And I asked him if he would call me when he got to Carthage, which is about 12 miles away from his home in Southern Pines. It usually is about a 15, 20 minute drive.
    Well, I went on to bed and kept looking out the window off and on, and it was still snowing, and he never called me. And I figured he just was not going to disturb me that night after it got later on. But at 2:15 that next Wednesday morning, he called me and said he finally got to Carthage from Southern Pines. And from the trees that had already snapped, and from the heavy amount of snow and so forth. So that is when we opened up our center and began operations at that time, to get the county emergency management plan put into operation.
    And then Mr. Britt, our emergency services director for the county had to come and get me Tuesday morning about 9:00 in his four-wheel-drive, and we had to push, got stuck. We finally made it to Carthage. And I am going to let him take over at this point and tell you some of the details of the storm and how we handled that.
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    Mr. COBLE. Mr. Britt. Now Mr. Britt, you are the director of emergency services?
    Mr. BRITT. That is correct.
    Mr. COBLE. Good to have you with us.
    Mr. BRITT. Thank you, sir. It is certainly my pleasure to have the opportunity to meet with you and review some of the challenges that we faced during this winter event. It certainly, as everyone has mentioned so far, is not the norm for central part of North Carolina. It is something that we were not expecting.
    And kind of the way I would like to start that out with is the day, the Monday the 24th, we were actually sitting in my office and reviewing a new computer program that the State Emergency Management Office had put in place over the past year, but it was our first exposure to a program called EM 2000. And that program would be the link between the local emergency operations center and the state emergency operations center for requesting any type of resources. With that program in place, that allowed us to go ahead and make the request, and it certainly allowed them on the other end to process that and then eventually pass that request to us.
    As we were reviewing that program, we were monitoring the National Weather Service who continued to tell us we were in for a mild or light winter weather event. So no one anticipated what we were about to receive. As the day wore on, we did kind of get some indications that things were not going to be as light as we thought, but still we believed, based on those reports, that by 11:00 p.m. that the snow would be subsiding and moving on from our particular area. However, that did not occur, as you have already heard.
    Later that night, again, Mr. Meers did open the emergency operations center, and by about 4:00 a.m. the following morning, which would have been the morning of the 25th, roads were almost totally impassable and what we saw were that the number of 911 calls were starting to increase and the ambulances and the police cars were not able to reach those 911 calls. At that point, a request was made for some additional manpower, and that manpower was dispatched from the National Guard with resources arriving the next morning. And we will talk about those in just a moment. But some of the requests we were receiving, obviously people were without power, people were without water, they were—as the sun started to come up, I almost said, but as it started to get light outside, people were finding that they could not get out, they could not move from their driveways.
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    We had a lot of concern from individuals who were dependent on home medical equipment. Without power, the battery reserves that they had were certainly not going to carry them any long periods of time, and most of those people psychologically and medically dependent, were becoming quite concerned. Again, it was mentioned earlier, we do have a lot of retirees and elderly individuals that live in our community, so we were receiving a lot of calls in the 911 center for those types of situations.
    I would be, again, remiss if I did not comment at this point how rapidly, if you will, the state responded to our request. State Emergency Management officials were certainly in touch with us, not only by the computer system but also by phone, and we were moving in the right direction of getting resources and certainly planning for our next operational period. Looking at the first 12 hours and then certainly starting to plan beyond that 12-hour initial operation period.
    One of the things that we did do, and it has already been mentioned, we started receiving a lot of phone calls in the emergency operations center from local citizens, as well as local officials, asking for that assistance from Fort Bragg. And that was mentioned earlier. I will not go back into that, I just want to mention that that request was evaluated in the emergency operations center and certainly considered a priority. And so therefore, we did make a computer request to Raleigh asking, could the local Fort Bragg Military Reservation be notified, and certainly those resources and manpower dispatched to Moore County.
    I will give you just a piece of paper that was returned to us that indicates that we had sent the request in and that that request was denied. We considered that request active throughout the rest of the event, but again, the reasons for that have already been discussed.
    Mr. COBLE. And this is Fort Bragg's information indicating that Fort Bragg was unable to fulfill the request under existing authority, which is the same thing they told me. And I am having some problems with that, after the fact, but we will get into that later on. This will be made part of the record.
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    [The information received follows:]

    [insert here]

    Mr. MCNEILL. Again, just to kind of summarize that, during this event, we were looking for such things as generators, we were looking for assistance in transportation. We had two ambulances by 6:00 a.m. that morning that were no longer able to move at all, they were stuck out in the field. It took two days to get those out of the snow and get them back to their bases.
    The state did dispatch, through the National Guard, Hummers that were used to assist in transportation of patients over the next five to six days. Those were a lifesaver, I have to admit. They were not the best accommodations for a patient being transported to the hospital, but they certain provided us with the opportunity to get them where they needed to be. And without those, we would not have been able to respond to the 911 calls for medical assistance.
    Also those Hummers were used by police, local sheriff's department to move into areas that maybe they could not get into, even with their four-wheel-drive vehicles. So we certainly do appreciate and could not have survived this event without having those resources on site here.
    I think that basically summarizes—and just to go back and mention real quickly, those folks that were on the home medical equipment, they seemed to overrun our local emergency department. We had nowhere else to take them at that particular point in time, and considering their needs of having to have power to operate oxygen equipment, if you will, and other home medical equipment, the only place we had, once transportation was available, is the local emergency department. And it did create problems, and we have gone back and addressed some of those. We did make requests for some additional oxygen cylinders and worked with our local medical facilities to fulfill that, where we could get the needed supplies to these individuals, versus having to take the individual to the resource. So that really took us a couple of days, if you will, to start meeting those demands, but people were taken care of during those times, and to my knowledge, we did not have one adverse patient outcome due to this particular situation.
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    During clean-up, we had to experience some major emergencies of folks starting to get out and have some medical situations that occurred, but overall, things certainly did go extremely well.
    Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Britt.
    And Mr. Patnode, I am not trying to put pressure on you. You all have done very well in complying with the five to seven minute rule. If you feel pressure on you now, Tony, to do that—I am just kidding you.
    Mr. PATNODE. In fact, I think I can keep mine under that.
    Mr. COBLE. No, I just said that with tongue in cheek. You proceed.
    Tony Patnode is the Director of Community Development in Moore County.
    Mr. PATNODE. Morning. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this winter storm 2000 with you.
    I began work for the county in July of 1999 and winter storm 2000 was my first experience with a declared disaster and with FEMA. My involvement in responding to the immediate emergency was very minor, although I did work two nights in the emergency operations center. That was Friday night, January 28th and Sunday night, January 30th.
    Mr. COBLE. Now Tony, you said you began employment with the county when?
    Mr. PATNODE. January of 1999——
    Mr. COBLE. OK.
    Mr. PATNODE. —July of 1999.
    Once the disaster was declared, I was named the county's public liaison. In this role, I received inquiries from the public and other municipalities concerning disaster relief and reimbursement. I received word that FEMA has scheduled two meetings to distribute information on Tuesday, February 9th. I notified the municipalities within Moore County of these meetings and attended the meeting that was scheduled in Lee County that afternoon at 2:00 p.m. In that meeting, documentation associated with filing applications for reimbursement claims was distributed. Entities present scheduled a kick-off meeting. One of the documents that was distributed was a request for assistance. These were completed by each entity present and collected during the meeting.
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    Since these same FEMA representatives had already attended a similar meeting in another county that morning, some time slots and days were already scheduled to have these kick-off meetings. Our kick-off meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, February 22nd, four weeks after winter storm 2000 began. I notified the appropriate county personnel and department heads to attend this meeting and asked them to prepare questions on what items would be eligible for reimbursement and other activities.
    Just prior to the meeting, I was contacted by the FEMA coordinator that was to conduct the meeting, just to confirm the time and place of the meeting. Also just prior to the meeting, I was contacted by a representative of First Health of the Carolinas, and I invited him to attend the meeting also. Once the meeting began and introductions were made, I realized that there were, in fact, three FEMA coordinators that were there at the meeting to assist us with our claims.
    Since this was my first meeting with FEMA, I was surprised that the meeting was conducted in a manner that it was assumed that each of us knew exactly what to do in filing the claims, and that we knew which items were eligible for reimbursement and which were not. In fact, the representative from First Health of the Carolinas was told that if he did not have his request for assistance in by the end of the day, they would be ineligible for any reimbursement. I felt that these actions were inappropriate for a meeting that was supposed to be a kick-off meeting, and we found out that this would be Moore County's first time that we had applied for what was considered a large claim. Our claims with hurricanes before then had all been small claims.
    And I think that leads us in to John and his experience with filing our claims.
    Mr. COBLE. Well, you win the blue ribbon, Tony. You did not even take five minutes, I do not think.
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    Mr. Frye, good to have you with us.
    Mr. FRYE. Thank you, Congressman Coble.
    County Management has charged me as the county's financial services director, to coordinate the team effort it takes to file claims with FEMA. This is the third time that I have been involved with a FEMA claim. All the previous claims, as Mr. Patnode has addressed, were small claims. These were when previous hurricanes had passed through the area. Small claims, according to FEMA are $48,000 or less. Our claims in the past have been small, they have been for operations of shelters, and we had done some debris removal and reduction at our landfill in those previous claims.
    This would be our first large claim, over $48,000, that we had ever filed, and we were somewhat unfamiliar with the process. It is very different than with the small claims. A team of individuals was assembled and at that kick-off meeting, we were given basically three business days to have our applications filed. Mr. Shulman, I would ask you to sit this down, but I brought this for a reason. This is a copy of our application that we filed with FEMA. Our total application was for $738,000. The majority of those funds was for the burning of debris at our landfill. It was also for utility repairs and it was also for what we call emergency preparedness. That was the operating of our shelters.
    Our team worked very hard. We did negotiate and get four business days to have our application completed. We had a couple of individuals who worked through the weekend compiling overtime and salary information by employee. These applications are very detailed, right down the horsepower of each generator used, the chainsaws used, the hours used. It is very detailed by each piece of equipment that is in place.
    We appreciate, first of all, this funding that is available to us. We realize that without it, it would have been out of our own reserves in Moore County. So we do not mean to sound unappreciative. We are very appreciative for it.
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    The process is somewhat cumbersome at times, and we would like to maybe offer a couple of suggestions into that process, or at least share our experience.
    Mr. COBLE. John, that is precisely why we are here.
    Mr. FRYE. Sure, and we appreciate that.
    Mr. COBLE. Like I said, nobody is pointing fingers at anybody, nobody is going to buggy whip anybody. But doggone, if it was not done right the first time, let us do it right the second time. Precisely why we are here.
    Mr. FRYE. The individuals that came and conducted the meeting did give us clear instructions. We had a short time period to pull together our application. When they returned on Tuesday morning, the next Tuesday morning, they reviewed our application with us, and they said it was a good-looking package. All the forms were filled out properly, they were reviewed. The team included one debris specialist, and that was Mr. Terry Robbins, and we went through our application line-by-line, looking at our estimates for loss of landfill space, looking at our estimates of the tonnage. We weighed the debris coming in, and then it is converted into cubic yards, because we had a contract to burn the debris in cubic yards. That was all reviewed in a very detailed manner, and we felt really good about it. They said it was a great-looking package, we all left the meeting feeling really well.
    And we inquired as to what the process was from that point, and we were instructed that now this application goes to what they call a DFO, a field office, in Raleigh, of FEMA. And there it would be reviewed intensively. Then they would approve the project, encumber the funds, and pass it to the State of North Carolina Emergency Management office to disburse the funds. All of our checks come from the State of North Carolina.
    Mr. COBLE. All right. Now what time frame was this, John?
    Mr. FRYE. From the time the application was handed to these three gentlemen on that Tuesday morning, February 29th, it was approximately eight weeks until we heard that our application had—any of our applications had been approved. To date, one of the three has been approved, and that is our debris burning, the large project has been approved and passed to the State of North Carolina for payment. And according to the State of North Carolina, we are about three weeks from getting a check.
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    That is going to make it about a three-month process. Under the large project, you are supposed to file a large claim and then make regular draws against that funding. And that was what we understood. But you know, three months into it, our project will nearly be completed by the time we have drawn any funds. Moore County is fortunate, we are owed at this point about $226,000. We are fortunate to have that in reserves and able to manage that.
    We are in a burning project. We are accruing expenses currently at about $25,000 per week in a burning project. I will speak on behalf of our towns in the county. Although we are a burning project, they were a debris collection. Many of our towns have accrued hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses for debris collection. They have paid their contractors, many of them have really hit their fund balances hard to pay these contractors and are still waiting for their funding. According to the Village of Pinehurst this week, they have not received any funding as well from the storm project.
    So in summary, we feel that eight weeks waiting period to have this review completed was a little lengthy. In our opinion, possibly with one or two more days maybe here in the field with the specialists that were sent, perhaps it could have been reviewed on site and immediately approved as we went through each item with those gentlemen here. And we felt like they had actually pre-approved our application anyway, while they were here, because we did go over each of our estimates and each of our calculations with them.
    I am very unfamiliar with what happens in the DFO, the field office. I am not sure what Federal mandates and guidelines they are operating under and I cannot even address that. My contact for those eight weeks has been with the State of North Carolina, and all they can do is look on their computer and see if the project has been released or not. I have called them every week, you know, checking in with them. We actually went ahead and filed invoices with them. They have been very helpful, having our invoices ready to go, as soon as the project was approved, so we did not have quite a delay in getting a release of those funds.
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    Mr. COBLE. Gentlemen, I think you all gave detailed accounts. I regret again that Tillie Fowler is not here because she is the expert on FEMA. I am not. I know very little about FEMA. I have learned today as we go along. I will review this, however, with Ms. Fowler in detail, and when Mr. Gilchrest comes here, he has had more exposure to FEMA than I. In addition to my lack of knowledge, he perhaps will be able to support me to some extent.
    Let me put questions to you all.
    Mr. Chairman, Michael, what was the impact of this—now you all have probably touched on this, but I want to get it for the record. What was the impact of this disaster on your community and how would that have been lessened or diminished through assistance from Fort Bragg? It is a rhetorical question, but I want it in the record.
    Mr. HOLDEN. Well, the impact, is both, as Mr. Britt has said, it is an emotional one. You have got folks out there who are scared. That impact is significant. Being able to clear the roads, get the electricity going, get the trees cleared, that imposes a significant impact on our citizens.
    Economically, we had a week that businesses were closed, people could not get to work, people could not do things. You know, if you are someone on a low income, and you spend a week not working, that is significant.
    So you know, I do not know that I can, off the top of my head, quantify it in dollar terms, but it is a significant impact economically, emotionally, on a community to have something like this happen.
    Mr. COBLE. Mr. McNeill, you and/or Mr. Frye, has FEMA's failure to reimburse the county at this juncture affected your ability to continue the debris removal operations? Let me hear from either of you about that.
    Mr. MCNEILL. The debris-burning process which we have ongoing in our landfill has, to my knowledge, gone very well. It will continue now for some time. Our Public Works Director was unable to be here today, or I would have had him to answer that question specifically. But we need reimbursement, though, to be able to continue the anticipated cost that it is going to take to complete the job. We would like to be able to get money drawn down on a regular basis. Right now, we find ourselves at budget time here in Moore County, as all other local governments are, and it would be extremely helpful to get reimbursed as soon as possible.
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    Mr. COBLE. Mr. Frye, do you want to add anything to that?
    Mr. FRYE. Our contracts with our contractors are not contingent upon FEMA funding. We have an obligation to pay our contractors if we have the funds available. And to date, we have not had a problem, as I stated, funding those invoices as they come in. But for some of the smaller communities, that might have been more of an issue.
    Mr. COBLE. And I think in some counties in our state, it would be more of an issue. You all are—I do not mean to—I do not mean this—you all are more opulent than others. The Chairman's smiling approvingly as I say that.
    Go ahead.
    Mr. FRYE. And the State of North Carolina requires all cities and counties to have a certain level of operating reserves, which is a tribute to North Carolina to help us make it through these kind of financial crises.
    Mr. COBLE. All right. Well, let me home it in with a little bit more certainty. To Mr. Frye, how has this storm and its clean-up process affected the county's financial condition?
    Mr. FRYE. The size of our claim, the total size of our claim, has not had a major impact on our financial condition.
    Mr. COBLE. OK.
    Mr. Patnode—you all stand by just a minute. Tony, if you will, describe the effect that additional personnel and equipment—and this is sort of an extension of the question I put to Michael—but the effect that additional personnel and equipment would have had on your ability to have done your job fully and properly during the storm and its immediate aftermath?
    Mr. PATNODE. I felt that, like I say, possibly the lack of road-clearing equipment prevented people from returning to work. Again, I was not called in to really work in the emergency operations center until Friday night and a vehicle had to be sent to pick me up and bring me to work. I think that would have minimized the impacts on some of our lower-income citizens, as Michael mentioned, not being able to work for a week. If those roads had been passable and allowed them to return to work, they would have felt the impact less also.
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    Mr. COBLE. Well, that goes back to what I said initially, when I said that the lack of ability to remove the fallen trees and the lack of ability to remove the snow I think were two of the salient features that probably made old men out of you ahead of your time.
    I did not mean to interrupt you, Tony.
    Mr. PATNODE. No, I was just going to say, I live also in Southern Pines, in probably one of the bigger subdivisions in that community, and it was the following Thursday—not the Thursday after the snow, but the following Thursday before the first snow plow came down the street I live on.
    Mr. COBLE. So you are talking ten days. Mr. Britt, to what extent would the—again, going back to this clearing—the removing—the problem of the trees and snow, to what extent would the clearing of the roads and the highways have affected your ability to transport individuals in need of medical attention? I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you.
    Mr. BRITT. OK. I wanted to say, it almost goes without say, certainly to be able to access these rural areas. But let me back up to the 25th, that morning of the 25th when all of the 911 calls were starting to overflood the 911 center. Understanding that people had to be placed in a queue, we will get to you as soon as we can get people to you.
    To kind of make that a little more visual, we actually had ambulances that were proceeding to emergency calls that would reach a fallen tree and not be able to travel any further. Before we could get someone in that area to get that tree, there would be trees behind them, so it would actually land-lock them in their ability to travel at all. They were almost placed on an island, if you will.
    So certainly, the ability to remove the debris from the roadway and clear the snow in an expedient manner would not only have brought the emergency response, whether it is police, fire or EMS, but certainly would have brought peace of mind to the individuals in any given community. So I think that would have certainly made an impact on their state of mind, even though they were sitting home without power or without water in many situations.
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    Mr. COBLE. Tony, back to you—Mr. Patnode. As Moore County's designated liaison to FEMA, were the officials who were tasked to Moore County and the region generally helpful in completing the reimbursement procedures? Could there be improvements or were you satisfied with the way it went, without being critical. I am not asking you to be critical, just——
    Mr. PATNODE. I feel like they were generally helpful. I think they were extremely helpful when they returned on the 29th and went through our claim with John Frye. Again, I think the initial contact, what was our kick-off meeting, it just appeared they assumed we all were familiar with the process.
    Mr. COBLE. Yeah.
    Mr. PATNODE. And I do not think I was the only one that was not familiar with the process.
    Mr. COBLE. Well, this was a case of first impression for all of you, probably.
    Mr. PATNODE. Right.
    Mr. COBLE. Let me be a pessimist and look to—let us take off our snow hats for a moment and go into the summer. Now I know that recent rains have probably eroded the threat of forest fires in the imminent future. The forecasts seem to suggest, however, that we may have an unusually dry summer. If we do experience a dry summer and the threat of forest fires increases, how is this threat compounded by the debris left from the winter snowstorms, A? And B, does the county's FEMA claim include costs for removal of debris that raise the threat for forest fires in the area? I know you all have got more to worry about than forest fires, but I am just looking ahead now. Who wants to field that one? John, you are the manager probably.
    Mr. MCNEILL. Let me just start by saying that you have raised a real issue that we happen to have here in Moore County. There are a number of limbs that remain on the ground, on various private property throughout Moore County that—in fact, there probably—I have a limb that is dead that is actually in one of my trees at my house, and I am sure there are a lot of other people that have tree limbs that broke that did not hit the ground, which is creating a tremendous fire hazard here in the county.
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    Our Forest Service, which is a cooperative venture between the State of North Carolina and the county is aware of that. Our Forest Service was a tremendous help to us during the storm by bringing their people in to shuttle personnel in and out of the center, staffing shelters, bringing personnel back and forth. But our claim does not address the future potential forest fires.
    Mr. COBLE. John, you want to add to that?
    Mr. FRYE. Sure. Our claim was for municipal properties, a municipal claim only. There was no funding released, according to the FEMA representatives, for individuals or private companies to recover damages to their properties or businesses. Many of our forests here are owned by corporations and individuals and there was no FEMA funding made available for private storm removal, trees, whether it be on a residence or whether it be on a farm or whether it be on a tree farm.
    Basically we relied on the FEMA folks at the kick-off meeting to relay to us, well, what types of things are eligible during a winter storm? We knew some of the items that were available, going into forest land and removing tops of trees that had been broken out was not something we all discussed or were even aware was available. Again, our claim financially did top $700,000. Andy Wilkinson with the Village of Pinehurst relayed to me that their claim topped over $700,000 for debris collection. I am sure Southern Pines had a similar size claim, as well as some of the smaller towns.
    Something Mr. Patnode mentioned, during the meeting, at the kick-off meeting, it became aware to Moore County Emergency Management Director, Steddy Meers, that many of the small towns had not filed claims. As they pulled out their list of who had asked for assistance, many of them had not. And to his credit, I would like to mention that that afternoon, he got on the phone and faxed the appropriate forms to the smaller communities and made sure that, if they wanted to file a claim, that they got a claim faxed in that day. And that was a nice thing that he was able to do.
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    Somehow these smaller communities may have just missed the boat and were not aware that funding was even available to them.
    Mr. COBLE. All right. Now let me ask you all a FEMA question. And I do not want you FEMA folks to think that I am isolating you, but after all, this is a FEMA hearing.
    As someone, you all collectively, who had never prior had dealings with FEMA, generally speaking, far as large claims, John, as you pointed out, on a disaster of this size, did you find the procedures difficult to understand, and if so—probably so—and if so, did you receive adequate assistance in the completion of these procedures? And I will hear from whoever wants to be heard.
    Mr. FRYE. I guess I will say, yes, sir.
    Some of the guidelines are difficult to understand, but to the credit of the FEMA folks, most of the FEMA folks that came out to help us were very helpful. When we had questions, they were available. Our biggest problem was the short time limit that we were given. It was four weeks after the storm before we had a kick-off, the kick-off was where we became educated as to what was available and how to claim and what to claim. And then we only had four business days to complete our application in the best manner that we could. And that was our biggest obstacle. It was not the personnel, per se, most of them were very knowledgeable. Most of them were ready to help us, especially at our second meeting, and also on the phone in between our first and second meeting. Many of them were helpful to us. It was just we were under the gun, we had a very short time period to file something that was somewhat unfamiliar to us.
    Mr. COBLE. Mr. Britt, several years ago, I visited Elon College Elementary School, and they had been named the top ten schools in the country. And during my visit to the campus there, I asked the principal how many volunteers she had; 825, she replied. I ask you, sir, what sort of volunteer effort did you have in assisting transporting individuals who needed specifically medical attention? Did you have an adequate number of volunteers?
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    Mr. BRITT. Well, when you say adequate, we did not have 825, but you can almost say that we had a large percentage of the county that was overall volunteers. And I will talk specifically about volunteers in just a moment.
    But what I mean by that is simply, we had people, neighbor to neighbor, going door-to-door checking on people. So we do know—and making phone calls back to the emergency operations center and asking us to go if they could not find someone home. So in reality, almost every citizen of this community was a volunteer during these seven to ten days.
    But beyond that, we have about 500 volunteer firemen, we have about 100 volunteer rescue personnel, all were contributing to this event during this time period. In addition to that, we had people picking up the phone and calling us saying, we have got four-wheel-drive vehicles, can we help? The Forestry Service, as Mr. McNeill mentioned a moment ago, they actually coordinated the effort, not only of the Forestry vehicles, but also of the volunteers, to go and shuttle people to work at the hospital in some situations, and to other businesses. This volunteer group of four-wheel-drive owners changed from day to day, but any given day, we would have a minimum of 25 people on that list.
    So the volunteer—volunteerism is alive and well in Moore County, and certainly the volunteer effort for this particular event was outstanding.
    Mr. COBLE. I will get this in more detail with our state and our FEMA representatives. But I am told, and we have voluminous papers regarding this storm that devastated you all last winter, but there was a report from Fort Bragg that indicated it was the belief of someone at Fort Bragg—perhaps the commanding officer there—that the massive snowfall was not a life-threatening incident. Am I correct in saying that there would be a quintet sitting before me who would not agree with that? I do not mean to be coaching the witnesses, but——
    Mr. HOLDEN. Well, if you are sitting—like I said, you know, in my business, I talk—and my business is primarily dealing with our retirees here, but right after the snow storm, I had two ladies that came to see me, they are both in their 80's—sisters who live in Whispering Pines. And like I said, when I was testifying, it does not matter how much money you have got, if the bank is closed and everything is closed, it does not matter. These two ladies, both use walkers, sweet little ladies, they were sitting there in their home on Tuesday morning, no electricity, nothing. That is life threatening there. They finally survived because a neighbor, later that day came to check on them and took them and took them out of the house. But that is life threatening when it is 15 degrees outside and you have got no heat and your house is down to 30 or 40 degrees, which happened in my case and a lot of folks here. But with folks like that, widows who are living alone, and folks like that living alone, that is life threatening.
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    Mr. COBLE. And I am sure, Michael—you said neighbors came to transport them away. In some instances, would trees probably would preclude neighbors coming to the driveway——
    Mr. HOLDEN. Sure. Yes.
    Mr. COBLE. —that would have even compounded the problem.
    Mr. HOLDEN. I do not know exactly how, but you ought to have heard these two ladies describing trying to start a fire. They tried to start a fire in their fireplace and they could not get it going. They could not get anything going. That is desperation.
    Mr. COBLE. Gentlemen, anybody want to close out? Each of you thanked me for being here, I thank you all for being here, taking time from your respective schedules. And I am not suggesting what you do the rest of the day, but if your schedules permit, I would like for you to be able to hear the second panel, if that is convenient for you.
    Mr. Manager, do you want to be heard?
    Mr. MCNEILL. Let me just say that, while the week that we experienced, as the Chairman indicated, found many people needing help, we had volunteer people that were citizens that would check on other people and that type of thing. But we were fortunate here, unlike the counties in the eastern part of North Carolina that suffered from flood, that we did not lose a lot of homes, we did not lose a lot of businesses, and we did not lose a lot of lives. What we had was a week that threw us totally out of routine, it threw us into a situation, in some cases, where we are so used to having power, we are so used to having telephone, we are so used to be able to get in our car and go where we want to go when we want to go. We are used to having water turn on in our tap when we want to drink something or whatever. All that was taken away from us for one week. But unlike eastern North Carolina, we were blessed that we did not suffer as great as they did. But we have learned something from this event that we had that, certainly there will be things that we will do differently next time, but I do not think there will be a greater effort made next time than what was given this time by all of our people.
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    Mr. COBLE. Well, and David, I think other communities also would benefit from what you all experienced and what you have shared with us here today. Many thanks to you, gentlemen.
    Folks, let us take about a ten-minute recess. Let me check on Mr. Gilchrest and see if he is alive and kicking, and then we will hopefully resume in about 10, 12 minutes. So you all be at ease then.
    [Recess.]
    Mr. COBLE. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for your patience. I want to recognize the Chairman, who will preside over the second panel. Wayne Gilchrest resides on the eastern shore of Maryland and he left the eastern shore of Maryland, he tells me, at 3:30 a.m. today. I told him I owe him big time.
    Wayne, it is real good to have you in the Sand Hills. Have you been to the Sand Hills before?
    Mr. GILCHREST. I was going to say Mr. Chairman, I guess we have switched seats.
    Howard, no, I have never been to this part of North Carolina. I spent some beautiful in my youth on the coastal area outside Jacksonville called Camp LeJeune.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. COBLE. I thought you were an alumnus of the Marine Corps, I had forgotten about that. But it is real good to have you here, Wayne, and I will withdraw to my appropriate spot up here and let you have the gavel.
    Mr. GILCHREST. [Presiding.] And I will say to the few and faithful gathered here today in this beautiful town of Carthage, North Carolina that you just may have, for those of you who live here, one of the best and most precious members of the House of Representatives, today and maybe in the past as well. We enjoy Howard's intellect, his honesty and what ranks right at the top his humor. And he makes the institution more human by his presence. So that is why, Howard, I decided to get up at, actually leave the house at 3:30 this morning, to come down here and help you out in this situation.
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    Mr. COBLE. Will the gentleman yield?
    Mr. GILCHREST. I will yield to the——
    Mr. COBLE. Folks, I owe him really big time, now. I will never get to pay him back.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Wayne, I appreciate that.
    Mr. GILCHREST. We will have lunch at the Capital Hill Club next week sometime.
    The Chair now calls the witnesses for the second panel. First we will hear from Doug Hoell of the State of North Carolina. Mr. Hoell holds the position of Chief of Operations for the Division of Emergency Management. We will next here from Lacy Suiter of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Mr. Suiter holds the position of executive associate director of the Response and Recovery Directorate. It is the standard procedure of the subcommittee to swear in all witnesses. If you would please stand and raise your hand. I do this to my children every night before they go out, so it is——
    Mr. COBLE. By the way, Wayne, I inadvertently failed to submit the oath to the first panel. That was my mistake, but you go ahead. I failed to do that.
    Mr. GILCHREST. All right. Seeing that how I am a member of Congress, I probably should say, do we solemnly swear? But we will——
    [Witnesses sworn.]
    Mr. GILCHREST. We ask that you summarize your statement, gentlemen, to about five to seven minutes, and we look forward to hearing your testimony this morning. Up in Maryland, while this snow hit—and we had a lot of snow up in Maryland as well, of course we have snow plows up there, I am not sure if they have as many snow plows down here in North Carolina—we did watch with some sense of alarm that this section of North Carolina was hit so hard with that amount of snow and that amount of cold for that period of time. And so when Mr. Coble asked me to come down here for this hearing, it was so that we could figure out a way that, if this event happens again, the Federal Government, the state government and the county government would be much more prepared to meet the needs of the citizens.
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    At any rate, and on that note, we look forward to your testimony. And I am not sure which—Mr. Hoell, you may begin, sir.
TESTIMONY OF H. DOUGLAS HOELL, JR., ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT; AND LACY E. SUITER, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, RESPONSE AND RECOVERY DIRECTORATE, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

    Mr. HOELL. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity, in fact, to speak to your subcommittee.
    I would like to start by saying that, on Monday, January the 24th, 2000, there was no prediction for a grand record-setting snowfall. In fact, they were predicting a light snowfall, one to three inches. But we were experiencing some problems in the western part of the state. So the State of North Carolina Division of Emergency Management activated its western branch office, and we assigned a limited number of state active duty National Guard personnel and equipment to the western branch office, to service those counties in the western part of the state that were experiencing some problems. Basically Mecklenburg, Union County, Cabarrus County and Anderson County. The State Emergency Operations Center in Raleigh was not activated beyond normal 24-hour communications center staff until early on Tuesday morning, when it was evident that this was a record-setting winter storm event.
    At the height of activity, 33 North Carolina counties were affected, and the total disaster cost for both debris or snow removal and emergency and protective measures for the local governments will exceed $22 million. Our Department of Transportation costs will come in at about $20 million. Our National Guard also will be about $1 million for a total of roughly $43 million for this event.
    By early on Tuesday morning, the snowfall was well over 15 inches deep with an additional five inches yet to fall before midday. The State Emergency Operations Center was activated and personnel to staff it had to be picked up at home by drivers with four-wheel-drive vehicles in order to get our personnel in to the State Emergency Operations Center.
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    Our liaison person from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who normally would join us in an event of this magnitude, was unable to get there simply because he could not travel, the weather was so bad. He did get there, however, on Thursday of that week. The event occurred on Monday night, he arrived on Thursday.
    The event was so widespread, there simply were not enough resources available to clear all of the roads in a short period of time. The Department of Transportation in North Carolina operates with a defined set of priorities with regard to snow removal. They clear interstate highways first, then primary routes, and finally the secondary roads, and it took several days to accomplish the task. Heavy support was required from the State Emergency Response Team for the rescue of hundreds of stranded motorists on I–95 north of Durham into Granville and Vance Counties. The threat of a secondary winter storm caused our Department of Transportation and our Division of Forest Resources to have to release some critical resources that had been called down to the central part of the state to support the event so that they could go back to the western part of the state in anticipation of this approaching additional storm.
    Where intrastate mutual aid resources were requested and supplied, recovery from the effects of the winter storm was accomplished at a more rapid pace than the communities that were solely dependent on the state's response resources. Again, the state's resources were spread across a 33-county territory.
    The following is a list of some of the types of resources and aid delivered to assist winter storm disaster victims. Four-wheel-drive vehicles and personnel were delivered from the National Guard, the Division of Alcohol Law Enforcement, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. The majority of these 33 counties that asked for four-wheel-drive resources needed them for the transportation and movement of medically-dependent home-bound patients. Dialysis really accounted counted for most of what they were asking for.
    The North Carolina Division of Emergency Management delivered 43,200 packaged meals, we call them heater meals, they are basically meals ready to eat, 15,000 gallons of bottled water and generators for auxiliary power to critical facilities were also supplied.
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    Road clearance of snow debris and vegetative debris was accomplished by the Department of Transportation, the Division of Forest Resources and Department of Corrections and the National Guard. Chainsaw crews for debris removal were brought in from Forest Resources. Inmate labor was provided for snow removal. Helicopters for emergency transportation were used from the National Guard. Cots and blankets to support shelter operations had to be brought in. State emergency response team members were deployed to heavily-impacted counties to serve as liaison officers, and in fact, we did send a liaison person here to Moore County to work with the Moore County officials as a liaison.
    Governor Hunt requested and received a Presidential disaster declaration, which included the 33 affected North Carolina counties. There was a resource shortfall concerning snow and debris removal equipment in the state. I mean, we simply had so many counties affected, and our resources were spread thin. A request came in from Moore County for assets from Fort Bragg. A request was made from the State Emergency Operations Center to use military equipment from Fort Bragg prior to the granting of the Presidential disaster declaration. The request was denied because snow removal was not considered by Fort Bragg officials to be a life-threatening situation.
    After the Presidential declaration was granted, the need no longer existed. The Federal Emergency Management Agency provided assistance by processing Governor Hunt's request for a Presidential disaster declaration. Funds were authorized once the declaration was granted. FEMA provided much-needed and appreciated assistance to the state of North Carolina through our experience with Hurricanes Dennis, Floyd, Irene and the winter storm as well. And you noted earlier that we had had a number—in fact, ten declared disasters in the state of North Carolina in the last four years. And each time, we have turned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for assistance.
    We can improve, and following is a list of areas where Federal Government assistance would be of great value in enhancing North Carolina's capability to manage significant future disasters.
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    First, I would say funding is desperately needed for a full-time emergency management coordinator or emergency management professional, I am sorry, in each North Carolina county. Currently, few local governments have the funds to support a quality emergency management program. In most cases, the fire marshal, the emergency medical services director or the 911 center director is assigned additional duties of preparing for major disaster events on top of the full-time responsibilities he already has. And we do give them some Federal dollars that go in to support that additional responsibility, but again, in a lot of cases—in fact, in most cases, in we do not have a full-time person devoted to that responsibility.
    Second is more readily available access to local military assets, prior to a Presidential disaster declaration would be a great help. But we recognize and realize that there are costs involved, and so somewhere along—perhaps permission for the state to share the cost of those resources that come off of a military base prior to a disaster declaration.
    Continued and perhaps even increased support of a family preparedness campaign might aid in the reduction of an overwhelming for immediate response. Citizens need to understand that disasters do happen, and anyone is subject to become a disaster victim. Self-reliance for the first three days should be the expectation and not immediate government assistance, though we do recognize that, in the instance where you have elderly persons and folks that cannot afford to do better preparation, then there certainly are some issues there.
    Finally, the Federal Government, if grants could be more or matching dollars be made available to assist local and state governments with the development of additional disaster response capability, that would be a big help as well.
    And I will wrap up by saying, thank you again for letting me have the opportunity to present.
    One thing I would like to add, though, as an addition just based on the first panel that spoke is that, in the state of North Carolina, when they file for disaster reimbursement, the Federal Government pays 75 percent of that cost. The State of North Carolina picks up 25 percent of that cost. So there is no, you know, cost to local government. I mean, technically they get back all of the dollars that they spend in debris removal and emergency and protective measures in these declared disasters.
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    Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much, Mr. Hoell. Mr. Suiter?
    Mr. SUITER. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. As you have noted, I have submitted testimony for the record. I do want to thank, on behalf of James Lee Witt, my boss, the Director of FEMA, thank you very much for inviting us here. He would like to meet with you any time it is convenient for you to further discuss this after this morning, if you need to do so.
    My part of FEMA is the Response and Recovery Directorate. We respond to governors' requests, make——
    Mr. COBLE. Sir, could you pull that mic a little closer, in case some of the folks in the back may not be hearing you.
    Mr. SUITER. Sure. My part of FEMA handles the response and the recovery part of the Federal family once the President has made a disaster declaration. We value these hearings and your comments that have been made this morning, and we will try to take them back. I try as much as possible to make sure our part of the Agency is a part of the solution when disasters occur, and not a part of the problem. I know that is what the Congress expects and we are working very hard in that direction. I promise you that we will be reviewing our procedures in this disaster here as well as other disasters.
    I can tell you that I was the state director in the State of Tennessee for over 30 years for five governors of both political parties. I have not found any disaster yet that knows the difference between a Democrat or a Republican, in terms of the parties. I have never been involved in any of the partisan parts of it, nor have I ever had anyone even imply such. Everybody wants to help when a disaster occurs.
    I can tell you that this Director, James Lee Witt, has worked very hard, having been a local county executive himself in Yell County, Arkansas, and then a state director, has worked very hard to make sure that this Agency is as responsive as immediately as we possibly can be within the law, and that we provide all the aid we can once the governor has requested. Governor Hunt, of course, has been very prompt in requesting aid, once he had the data and the information to do so.
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    We hope that we have a great partnership with the State of North Carolina, we hope it is as good with the State of North Carolina as it is with the local governments who have the relationships with the states. FEMA programs are administered through the governor, through the state coordinating officer, which I believe in this case is Doug, and that is how we deliver our services. In the U.S. we had 57 major Presidential disasters declared last year. We had, I think it was 16 fire suppression emergencies declared, and approx another dozen emergency declarations declared. It was a busy, busy year for the entire United States. North Carolina had six or seven of those particular events. It was a huge year for North Carolina, and I think it is to be commended, to the local government, to the state government here that no one lost their lives in the process of this particular disaster, and everybody got out and responded and so nobody died. As was also noted, we didn't have a large loss of homes and businesses and things in that event.
    Before James Lee took over FEMA, the best thing we could say about snow, having been a state director myself and gone through this, that the rule at that point in time was, no dough for snow. We simply didn't get declarations in those states for——
    Mr. COBLE. The rule was what, Mr. Suiter?
    Mr. SUITER. No dough for snow. That is kind of a saying, no dough for snow.
    James Lee, having been a local county executive, again, in Yell County, Arkansas, and having been a state director, realized that was not good. So we have been in the process of revising those policies, and trying to make it as simple as possible on the state and the local governments, to apply for assistance. The State having had to administer the programs, the local governments having to fill out the papers that you saw.
    Prior to James Lee, Senator Hollings referred to FEMA as the biggest bunch of jackasses in the Federal family. Other local executives in other parts of the country would say the second disaster was the arrival of FEMA on the scene. I hope we have gotten rid of that. As I said on the front end, that FEMA has become a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. And if we have not, then at this point it is my job to change that, and will be reviewing what comes out of these hearings as we can.
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    Our new public assistance policy, which the Director initiated, calls for us to make sure that we have 50% of our emergency work obligations made if possible within 30 days, that we obligate 80% of permanent work funding within six months and we close out 90% of disasters within two years. Now we do have to have procedures that we do have to go through for accountability. We have to make sure those procedures are accountable, and that we can account for the money that we do disburse, and you would expect that of us, of course, in the process.
    We hope that, as I have said, that we are reaching that goal. If we have made some mistakes here in this disaster, I promise you that we will correct them immediately and expedite whatever the assistance might be that comes through.
    Carlos Mitchell, sitting to my right here, is the Federal Coordinating Officer. The process which—I know you are familiar with it already, but just to restate it—is that the governor first has to determine that a major disaster exists in his state and request Federal disaster assistance from the President . Governor Hunt has to go through a process himself. He did that on about January 30th, is my recollection, and the President acted promptly on January the 31st, the next day. Mr. Mitchell was already here administering the disaster from Hurricane——
    Mr. COBLE. Floyd.
    Mr. SUITER. —there have been so many hurricanes here, I forgot which one he was administering—Hurricane Floyd, and he was actually in the area and worked with the state. I think the people of North Carolina should be very proud and pleased with both the state operation, and certainly the people of this community. I am certainly proud to be a part of this operation here, and we want to make sure that we do whatever we can to make it be even more efficient. We will try to answer questions now. Thank you for the opportunity and the time to speak with you today.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Coble?
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    Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And gentlemen, thanks to you all for being here. I appreciate that.
    Mr. Suiter, let me revisit my question concerning the—I don't want to be a prophet of doom and gloom—but about the possibility of forest fires. Would forest fire threats be covered under the hazard grant mitigation program?
    Mr. SUITER. Not normally. However, if there is an immediate public health and safety threat, and I do not know whether there is or is not in this case because I do not have any papers in front of me to tell me that, but I will look into it and I will tell you. But not normally, it would not be. That is a part of the Department of Agriculture which has that responsibility working with the State Departments of Agriculture. But I will research that and report for the record back to you.
    Mr. COBLE. I hate to keep harping on this, but I can just see all this debris from the fallen trees and the limbs, and if we do, in fact, have a dry summer, it would be a problem waiting to come to fruition, I am afraid.
    Mr. Hoell, when the State of North Carolina requested snow and debris removal assistance from Fort Bragg, what was Bragg's response? You may have touched on that, but I don't——
    Mr. HOELL. Their response basically was that it was not a threat to life.
    Mr. COBLE. OK.
    Mr. HOELL. And consequently they could not come off the base prior to the presidential disaster declaration. And quite frankly, I think, again, if there were a way for us to share some of the cost of bringing those assets off of the base, that might be a potential solution to that. But you know, again, pre-Presidential disaster declaration, and we did not have our FEMA representative in place at that time, though we were on the phone with him. We did talk to him by telephone but he did get there a little bit later. And by the time we were able to get to them, they were just simply—you know, there was not a need any longer.
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    Mr. COBLE. Well, now admittedly, we have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight today. It would be my conclusion that it clearly was a life-threatening situation, would you not agree with that, Mr. Hoell?
    Mr. HOELL. We would agree. In fact, that was the premise that we went upon in asking for the resources. But again, that was not the decision that was made.
    Mr. COBLE. Well, as you can see, this is the burr under my saddle, because I am still not convinced—and I do not need to be blaming Fort Bragg in absentia, but I talked to them twice, Mac talked to them once or twice, my administrative assistant, and we were told by Fort Bragg that they could do nothing as far as dispatching equipment and/or personnel to Moore County until the President signed a declaration of emergency. And I presume—and I am just thinking aloud now, gentlemen, that this, of course, would have to first come from Governor Hunt to the President, and then the President signs the declaration and then Fort Bragg can become involved.
    Mr. HOELL. And that was the procedure that was followed, in fact.
    Mr. COBLE. But Mr. Hoell, I am told now, after the fact, that that may not be accurate, that Fort Bragg—not just Fort Bragg, any military installation—could, in the event of danger to life or property, that they could activate without the President's signature. Am I right about that? I just came across this after the fact.
    Mr. SUITER. The local commander of whatever the base is, it is my understanding, and DOD should address this themselves, but I can tell you in previous disasters——
    Mr. COBLE. Well, I am going to let them address it.
    Mr. SUITER. So I may stand corrected, but I know, having worked disasters all across the United States, that the local commander has, within his discretion, if immediate public health and safety, life-threatening issues are at stake in his estimation, he can respond with or without reimbursement to that process. Once the governor requests, the President agrees (which again happened in about a 24-hour period of time here) then those costs would be eligible for reimbursement by FEMA. Until that point in time, they are not eligible, and there is no statutory authority to spend the money. And sometimes we do get local base commanders who do respond without FEMA's involvement in it, and no, we do not reimburse them in that case because the President has not made a declaration and they are operating outside of what they know to be their process. It does not happen very often. I do not know the commander at Fort Bragg, so I do not know whether he got caught up in that circumstance or not.
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    Mr. COBLE. And I do not know him either.
    Mr. SUITER. So that is part of what I will be investigating for the record also.
    Mr. COBLE. Mr. Hoell, I notice your friend is nodding in the affirmative when I was speaking. Does that say that you concur with me that perhaps I was given information that may not have been accurate?
    Mr. GLENN. Yes, sir, that is correct. My name is Steven Glenn, I work for Doug Hoell. Before I was transferred to Raleigh, I was the area coordinator over this part of the state.
    I have talked to Fort Bragg and Camp LeJeune on several occasions about emergency response and recovery. The base positions are that if it is an immediate threat to life and safety, they certainly will respond, without question. But for large-scale, or what they see as large-scale, response, they try to work through FEMA, through the established Federal response plan to provide assistance, because anything they move off base that is not recovered from FEMA, comes out of their budget, and of course, their primary function and objective is to prepare for war. Their comments were to me that with shrinking budgets and increasing demands, that makes it tighter and tighter for them to make those calls.
    Mr. COBLE. And the reason I am stuck on this, gentlemen, is that I recall—I will say to my Moore County friends—I recall conversations, and perhaps my staff had several conversations, helplessness. Folks would say if we could just get some heavy equipment, if we could just get some help from Fort Bragg, this problem would go away. That is why I am so frustrated about it.
    Mr. Chairman, I have more questions. Let me go to you, if you have questions, and I will come back. I do not want to hog all the time here.
    Mr. GILCHREST. I do not mind, Mr. Coble. I have just a couple and then I will yield back to you.
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    Mr. COBLE. OK, you go ahead.
    Mr. GILCHREST. And I do not want to—I just want to make clear in my mind the present situation that we are now discussing, so I understand when a Federal military facility can react.
    So it is my understanding that if there is a health or life threatening incident, then Fort Bragg, without a disaster declaration, without FEMA's direction, can respond to that.
    Mr. SUITER. It is the determination of the local commander.
    Mr. GILCHREST. I see.
    Mr. SUITER. As I understand it.
    Mr. COBLE. That is my understanding now too, if the gentleman will yield.
    Mr. GILCHREST. So in this situation, because it was apparently a large-scale problem—snowstorm, icestorm—and there did not appear to be, in the beginning, an imminent threat to life and health because the state, with their resources, was responding, that Fort Bragg decided that they would not get involved in this incident.
    Mr. HOELL. That is correct.
    Mr. GILCHREST. When there is a disaster declared by the governor and then also concurred by the President, does that change anything as far as the decision of the commander at Fort Bragg? Does he still have to wait for someone to give him direction or can he act?
    Mr. SUITER. It does change the process. When the President declares a disaster. He appoints a Federal Coordinating Officer (FCO), who is his personal representative in the field. The FCO can direct any Federal agency for any resource to go to the field and do whatever might be requested to do.
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    That is what Mr. Mitchell's role was in that particular disaster. The Secretary of Defense——
    Mr. GILCHREST. So that Presidential coordinator would be someone from FEMA?
    Mr. SUITER. Right, that is usually always a FEMA—is always a FEMA person.
    The Secretary of Defense, correspondingly then is required to appoint a Defense Coordinating Officer. At that point in time, whatever the missions might be that we requested of the Department of Defense Mr. Mitchell would turn to the Defense coordinating officer to fulfill that. It may or may not be Fort Bragg. There may be a military urgency going on and it may come from the Coast Guard, it may come from any military resource. We do not tell the Secretary of Defense how he fulfills that mission. We lay the requirements on it and he fulfills it. He has got a period of time to get that done in.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Now, Mr. Hoell, you said the National Guard was involved in this as well.
    Mr. HOELL. Yes, they were. We had numbers of National Guard troops activated. Their trucks, their Humvees, you know, helicopter assets, the things that we needed to use were readily available to us, and they were activated under the state's authority.
    Mr. GILCHREST. I see. So the National Guard would have to wait for the Governor to activate them before they could——
    Mr. HOELL. Yes, sir.
    Mr. GILCHREST. So it would be similar on the state level with the National Guard, as it is on the Federal level with Fort Bragg or Federal troops.
    Mr. HOELL. Right. But we actually activated some National Guard troops on Monday afternoon before this event really got significantly bad, because we were experiencing some problems in Charlotte and Union County and Anderson County and Cabarrus County. So we put some assets on state duty so that they could respond to the problems that we were having down there, which was a requirement for four-wheel drive vehicles and a requirement for auxiliary power.
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    Mr. GILCHREST. When you put the National Guard on state duty, who then sets the priorities for where those Humvees are going to go? Is it a local county official?
    Mr. HOELL. No, sir, we set up what we call an area command. One of our field branch managers and a colonel with the National Guard would be in charge of those assets that are assigned to that area command. The resource request comes from the county, the county calls up and says we need support, four-wheel drive vehicles, for example, and then out of those assets that are assigned to that area command, they will commit some of those.
    Mr. GILCHREST. They have to prioritize.
    Mr. HOELL. Yes, sir. Everything is done by priority because in an event like this where we had 33 counties affected, ultimately, you know, again, priorities did have to be set.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Suiter, given the nature of snow and ice, it comes, three days later it might be gone, based on what happened here in Carthage and Moore County and all the other counties that had the problem with the snow, is there any recommended change that you could give or suggest to Mr. Witt about how FEMA's response—do you think FEMA's response was adequate, do you think FEMA's response based on some new suggestions because of this incident, could be different?
    Mr. SUITER. I think FEMA's response part of it, not the recovery—I think the response part of it was responsive to the requests that were laid upon us to do. Once we got a request from Governor Hunt, the President acted on it within 24 hours or less and made that declaration.
    Basically, when it becomes snow and snow removal, it is a state and local problem. We are a reimbursement program then for extraordinary expenses.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Right.
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    Mr. SUITER. And record snowfall—as a matter of fact, our entire policy says that you have to be at or near the record snowfall to be eligible for any snow removal assistance. The state of North Carolina clearly were well beyond record snowfall actually in this particular case.
    When it comes to power outages such as what we had in New England a couple of years ago where you have got widespread power outages. FEMA is only allowed to provide assistance to state and local governments and private non-profits, municipalities, electric co-ops and things. We cannot do it for the private sector. However, we have enough flexibility in terms of emergency response, that we actually used the Air Force to fly in repair crews from North Carolina actually to Maine, and to the New England states, to go up there and repair all that stuff. We paid for all the emergency response, we cannot pay for the permanent restoration of that.
    Somebody brought up just before you got here about reimbursing commercial institutions. We do not do that, we are not permitted by the law to do that. It is only local governments and private non-profits and things of this nature.
    I do not know in this particular case, in the response part of it, disasters are owned and operated by the state and local government, the Federal Government—you know, we are an agency of 2300 people.
    Mr. GILCHREST. You do not have snow shovels.
    Mr. SUITER. We do not have snow shovels. As a matter of fact, I was in a Washington snowstorm and I was kind of impressed with the fact that they got us out of the neighborhood in five days here. We did not do that in Washington.
    So as always, there are after action reports that follow every disaster. We take those things seriously, we review them with the states and we will make adjustments.
    Mr. GILCHREST. So fundamentally, FEMA has to use the assets available to the state and then under certain circumstances, FEMA will reimburse the states for those assets or for loss of dollars under certain conditions.
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    Mr. SUITER. In this case here, about $40 million.
    Mr. HOELL. And I would say, you know, probably even more fundamentally, local governments use their assets first and then as they need additional assets, they call upon the state, and in the state of North Carolina, because of our disaster experience, we tried to build greater capability. I mean, we had stockpiled, based on the stuff that we had gained from Hurricane Floyd, the ability to deliver 43,200 packaged meals——
    Mr. GILCHREST. So that is where those meals, ready to eat, came from.
    Mr. HOELL. That is correct. They were in a warehouse sitting there for the next disaster. So we are building capability as we go. And we did use the National Guard assets and the DOT assets and the Forest Service assets, and those things that are available to go out and do the response. But again, in a significant event like this, as widespread as it was, certainly there were not enough resources to clear every road as quickly as we would have liked to have gotten it done.
    The only request that I am aware of that we made for Federal assistance other than to help us pay for it, was for the assets at Fort Bragg, which we did not get.
    Mr. GILCHREST. And I guess my last question is, Mr. Suiter, is there any change of a relationship and communication that you could recommend coming out of this situation between the Governor and the commanding officer of Fort Bragg?
    Mr. SUITER. I am not familiar with the relationship between the two of them. I can say that, as I mentioned, in our after action report, that type of activity is noted and what we might do to enhance that communication.
    Mr. GILCHREST. I see.
    Mr. SUITER. Certainly FEMA itself, in the absence of a Presidential disaster, has no authority to do so other than to encourage and we do do that, James Lee does bring folks together. As a matter of fact, I will be in Norfolk, VA in a couple of weeks meeting with the Joint Task Force Commanders about how to do these things faster. We are not looking at snows, we are looking at weapons of mass destruction, major earthquakes and things of this nature. Snow is not on the agenda, but I will put it on there now.
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    Mr. GILCHREST. Global warming if it happens real fast, I guess.
    Mr. SUITER. May I just make one more comment?
    Mr. GILCHREST. Yes.
    Mr. SUITER. There is something that started in this state under the leadership of its director Eric Tolbert, it is called the Emergency Management Assistance compact states. And as a result of that, 36 states or 37 it may be now, are members of this compact. That enables the governors of those states to respond to each other in assistance, with or without the President being a part of that process, having to make a declaration. So if the Governor of South Carolina has some resources that the Governor of Tennessee might need, they can swap across state lines. It has to do with licensing and things like that. And I think North Carolina needs to be recognized for that and specifically Eric Tolbert in the leadership that he has provided. I do not know whether they used that in this process or not, I can tell you that in major disasters that have gone on in the last couple of years—the fires in Florida, the hurricanes around the country, I suppose it came the other way. I have seen people from North Carolina flying the flag in southern Florida during Hurricane Andrew, as an example, and we have seen the North Carolina flag flying in other parts of the country. California comes this way and it is just a tremendous asset which got started, which the states have more resources than the Federal family is ever going to have in these processes. I do not think the Congress is going to want to appropriate enough money for us to have all this stuff sitting in place all of the time for a disaster that may or may not occur any more often than this particular disaster is. But you should be expecting for us to be able to respond—to coordinate the responses to that as efficiently, as quickly as we can. I want to pledge to you to try to do that. But I do want to recognize for the record, Eric Tolbert, just a tremendous individual, and the leadership he has provided all the states in this arena.
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    Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you very much. Mr. Coble.
    Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Suiter, for my information, when did Senator Hollings refer to you all as jackasses?
    Mr. SUITER. During Hurricane Hugo in 1989, sir.
    Mr. COBLE. I do not remember that.
    Mr. SUITER. I was not working at FEMA then, I was not one of the jackasses.
    [Laughter.]
    Mr. COBLE. You will be held harmless for that.
    But I think most people do not concur with that assessment. I mean when you all are called in, you are not unlike the Coast Guard, not unlike the firefighter. I mean, my gosh, problems are running all over the place. So I would not put a whole lot of stock in that if I were you, I am not going to.
    Mr. SUITER. Thank you.
    Mr. COBLE. Let me shift gears just a minute, Mr. Hoell. As you can tell, I am hung up on fallen pine trees. Is the Department of Transportation the primary state agency responsible for removing fallen trees from highways?
    Mr. HOELL. They do; yes, sir, on the state roads, state right-of-way, and the state owns most of the roads that are not in incorporated cities in the state of North Carolina.
    Mr. COBLE. And I guess maybe sometimes they bring the Forestry Service and other people in to help, but DOT primarily.
    Mr. HOELL. Yes, sir. The Forest Service crews generally do the chainsaw work and then our Department of Transportation personnel use their heavy equipment to pick it up, load it in the trucks and haul it. So that is the way it is done.
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    Mr. COBLE. Mr. Suiter, tell me—maybe this has been touched on already, but describe, if you will for us, the process, maybe I should say the bureaucratic or the governmental process, by which state and local governments are reimbursed for eligible expenses resulting from a disaster declaration.
    Mr. SUITER. Following the President's declaration, the period of time that is supposed to be convenient for the local governments or for the applicants involved, it may be private, non-profit organizations as well as state, local and county municipal governments, in that process. There is an applicants' briefing, where the State talks about eligibility and we talk about the process. From the time of the declaration applicants have 30 days to file a request for Public Assistance. Sometimes applicants submit their requests within two or three days, sometimes they take the entire 30 days. Sometimes local governments are so overwhelmed that it may take even longer. The Governor can request and the President has always granted extensions for a longer period of time. We cannot extend it two or three years or something like that, but certainly for another few weeks or few months, as we have done in Hurricane Floyd in this particular case.
    The request then will be filed and then a state person and a FEMA person will sit down with the local governments and do inspections of their damaged facilities. We prepare what is called a project worksheet. Once that project worksheet is prepared, it is submitted back to the disaster field office and goes through a review process to ensure that the people who wrote the project worksheet did so accurately, that they did not make commitments for which there is no eligibility or statutory authority to do. The worse thing that can happen in disasters from time to time if we do not do an adequate review is that we will obligate money electronically through SmartLink. And then six months or more will pass and the Inspector General will come in right behind us and say you did not have authority to do that, go collect that money back.
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    And that is why these review processes are necessary in the first place, just to make sure that the state has not made a mistake, that his disaster field office has not made a mistake, that our regional office in Atlanta and my office in Washington, so that we never have to go back to a situation and collect money back. It has happened in the past, we try to go for zero tolerance on that to make sure we are not in the business of coming down here and saying OK, whatever county we are in, Moore County or whatever county it might be, and say OK, you owe us a million bucks back now. And this is why, because our reviewer, our person working with you on the street gave you too much money in that process.
    Yes, sir, it does take a little time. Now if I may, I will only say one more thing, sir. I do not know how good a job we did on this particular briefing, I am going to find out though, I am going to report back to you—I do not know how good a job we did on it. But we were supposed to be asking does the local government have any immediate needs for money. And if they do, then we can process that right now and put money in your hands through the state of course, the state has to concur in it. But through the state we can put the money in your hands right now. We have no record that there was ever any request from anybody in North Carolina for immediate monies. If I am wrong, I will stand corrected, but these guys know the details of that better than I do. But we can put money in your hand quickly, in the local government's hand.
    Mr. COBLE. Now Mr. Suiter, to what extent do you receive input from officials who will be responsible for completing the forms, to ensure to your satisfaction that those completing the forms understand the wherewithal. Mr. Hoell, you may want to respond to that.
    Mr. HOELL. I will defer to Steve Glenn, if you would like because he basically manages that program.
    Mr. COBLE. You know, we heard from the first panel in many cases these folks had never been involved in this before and really were not expected to know what to do.
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    Mr. GLENN. The State of North Carolina partners with FEMA in providing a comprehensive assistance package under the Public Assistance Program. In North Carolina we give the applicants the opportunity to do all the work themselves and submit project worksheets to us up to a certain dollar amount. Then we go through and review it. That way, we are not always hovering over the top of them asking them where the work is. Or we can even actually go in and do the work ourselves if they provide us access to their records and provide us with a contact person. We actually send folks in to partner with local government and develop a project worksheet as a team or we will do it, if they just do not understand the rules, and either they are too busy, they are so overwhelmed, they have a huge disaster and they do not have time, they have a small staff or whatever reason, we can actually go in and do the work ourselves if they give us access to their records. 99.9 percent of the time, it is a partnership between local, state and Federal Government. There is a state representative, a local representative and a FEMA representative that work in a team to go through documentation and develop these project worksheets as thoroughly as possible to avoid the de-obligation issue that Mr. Suiter talked about earlier.
    Once those project worksheets are completed, they are sent to a quality control check at the disaster field office. The applicant is—we attempt to keep the applicant informed of that process. With disasters the size of Hurricane Floyd and the winter storm, sometimes it does not occur as often as we would like. When you have 580 applicants for Floyd and about 300 and some for the winter storm, you run into a problem of trying to keep the applicants updated as often as possible with a very small staff. So we try to keep them in the loop, we try to keep folks knowing where the application is throughout the process. Our folks do have 24 hour access to the Division of Emergency Management. I receive calls in my home on a daily basis late into the evening from applicants, to get ideas of where their money is and to try to attempt to free up money where it may be stuck in the system. We work with them, inform them where the application is at. As soon as the money is obligated, we inform the applicant of the obligation. Then we expedite payments wherever we need to. Usually the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management can process a payment, once it is obligated, within usually two weeks after we receive word from FEMA. I believe in Moore County's case, the obligation came I think on the 24th of April and we actually made the payment yesterday—day before yesterday. We authorized the payment and sent it over to the department to cut a check. So they should receive their first payment of their debris money, it should be $232,000 or $233,000, sometime in the next two weeks.
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    Mr. COBLE. You are talking about Moore County now.
    Mr. GLENN. Yes, sir.
    Mr. COBLE. OK.
    Mr. GLENN. That is about average. As far as funding goes, during Hurricane Floyd and during the winter storm, we asked all applicants as part of a standard checklist—our public assistance coordinators, the people who go out and do the kick-off meetings, have a checklist of questions they have to make sure they ask, and one of the questions is does the county or does the city or does the municipality need funding immediately because of any kind of financial constraints they might be under. Some small towns in North Carolina do not have the financial ability to float large bills for an extended period of time. If they do, then the state and the Federal Government have the ability to write a project worksheet for immediate needs funding, which is usually 50 percent of the emergency work or the debris clearance work that may be required.
    During Hurricane Floyd, the State of North Carolina and FEMA obligated about $6 million in less than a 10 day period and had checks on the street within seven days after FEMA showed up and we got the disaster field office organized. So we can move money very quickly when necessary.
    Mr. SUITER. There are two more—if I may say, sir——
    Mr. COBLE. Sure.
    Mr. SUITER. —there are two more levels of protection for the local government in this process. Occasionally after the project worksheet is written and it goes to our review panel, state/Federal review panel will reject it because they know it is not an eligible item. The local government, or the applicant, has the opportunity then to appeal that decision—basically it is his decision at that point—to appeal the decision that he has made, to the regional director. A separate team of folks will look at that project application and the regional director can reverse the decision if he agrees with it or he can concur in it.
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    After that one, assuming it is a reversal, I mean that it is an approval, that he concurs in the denial of whatever the benefit was, there is yet another level of appeal which then comes to me in headquarters and I'm the final determinant in that process. And I assign yet another group of people to go review that entire process and make a determination. We agree about 90% of the time. So there are two levels of appeal, constant levels of review in terms of results-based management, which we are required to have by the Congress under the GPRA.
    Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Suiter.
    You know, Randolph County, also in our Sixth Congressional Distract, was impacted by this storm as well, not so severely, however, as Moore was, it is my belief. Do you all want to comment about Randolph?
    Mr. HOELL. I do not have anything specific to Randolph, do you, Steve?
    Mr. GLENN. No, sir. I have not had anything come across my desk in particular. I can see if we—I can probably tell you how much money we have paid them so far.
    Mr. COBLE. All right, if you can dig that out. Then let me put a question to Mr. Suiter while you are doing that—strike that, let me put a question to Mr. Hoell.
    This was prepared by the staff, Mr. Hoell, and I think you have touched on it. How much money has the storm cost the State of North Carolina including costs expended by DOT? Now I presume—Dan, did you prepare this question?
    Mr. SHULMAN. Yes, sir.
    Mr. COBLE. By the DOT costs, are you referring to removal of trees primarily?
    Mr. SHULMAN. All the costs associated with the storm.
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    Mr. COBLE. All the costs associated——
    Mr. HOELL. The DOT costs are at about $20 million, the National Guard costs are at about $900,000, roughly a million dollars and that does not include Forest Service, you know, what their costs are going to be, does not include the Division of Emergency Management and what our costs will be. So there are still some things outstanding. So total cost of this disaster will exceed $43 million.
    Mr. GLENN. Randolph County has been paid so far, sir, $50,957.
    Mr. COBLE. OK.
    Mr. GLENN. They probably have more money coming to them.
    Mr. COBLE. So Randolph has just barely exceeded the small, what you all refer to as the small claim, the $48,000 threshold.
    Mr. Suiter, walk me through—I think you have done it before, and pardon me for being repetitious, but we might as well nail this down while we are here. Explain to what extent state or local governments are responsible for any expenses when Federal assets are mobilized in response to a disaster.
    Mr. SUITER. In a post-Presidential determination, the State of North Carolina, as an example, can make a request for a specific Federal mission. Let us assume that it is the Department of Defense. That will come to the Federal coordinating officer. In the process, he will determine whether that is an appropriate Federal mission or not, and they are almost always granted. I cannot think of anything in my tenure at least that has been inappropriate because the states are very good at that. He or she will determine if it is an appropriate Federal mission and then we will provide a mission assignment to whatever Federal agency we are talking about. That is directing them with the effect of the President, to go do whatever that mission called for, for which FEMA will reimburse the Federal agency for 100 percent of their cost for doing whatever that was. So they do it on a mission assignment basis.
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    Now we are required to go back then and collect 25 percent of whatever that total cost might have been from the state government, from the Governor in that case. So the Federal coordinating officer, sitting there working with the state coordinating officer, says OK, we are going to do this, we are going to use the Department of Defense asset or whatever asset we are talking about, you need to know that the total cost of using the Department of Defense resource is pretty expensive and you are going to be picking up—whatever it is, you are going to pay 25 percent of it. Are you sure, Governor, that we do not want to use the National Guard; are you sure we do not want to use your Emergency Management Assistance Compact. Those are shots they call. If they still want that asset, we do it, no questions asked, provide the mission and assuming there is not—in the case of the Defense Department—some other compelling issue where they should not be doing that for some reason. I have never personally known the Department of Defense to ever reject any reasonable mission short of during the Gulf War and times like that.
    Mr. COBLE. I am sure, Mr. Hoell, you and Mr. Suiter, will work with Mr. Gilchrest and me, but I want to be sure that every commanding officer of every defense installation knows that he or she can dispatch assistance without having in his hand a signed declaration by the President. Now either the person at Fort Bragg deceived me or he in fact did not know—and I am assuming the latter, I am hoping I was not deceived because I believed him when he said no, I cannot do anything until the President signs a declaration of emergency. Perhaps I was wrong in believing him, maybe I should have said, let me check behind you. But normally I think—I do not think it was unreasonable for me not to assume that he knew what he was talking about, knew about what he was talking. So if you all will look into that and I am going to do it as well because I think this bothers me.
    Let me ask you two more questions, Mr. Chairman, and then I will be through.
    Mr. GILCHREST. That is fine.
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    Mr. COBLE. Mr. Suiter, and this may already be in the record, to date how much money has been authorized under the Stafford Act for reimbursement in response to the storm?
    Mr. SUITER. This storm?
    Mr. COBLE. Yes. Or do you know? You may not know.
    Mr. MITCHELL. I believe we have obligated $12.8 million.
    Mr. COBLE. $12.8 billion?
    Mr. MITCHELL. Million.
    Mr. COBLE. I meant million, $12.8 million. And of the amount authorized, how much has actually been delivered, if you know?
    Mr. GLENN. Currently we have $1,099,778 that has been obligated to be paid.
    Mr. COBLE. Give me that figure again.
    Mr. GLENN. $1,099,778. That is what has been obligated to be paid, that is what has been all the way through the checks, been into—and actually money has been put into the SmartLink account and the state has turned around and authorized that for payment. So that closes that loop of review and everything.
    Mr. COBLE. That is fine.
    Mr. Chairman, while we have these experts here in the room and also at the desk, Dan, can you or Missy Jo think of anything that we have not mentioned that should be aired?
    [No response.]
    Mr. COBLE. Thank you, gentlemen, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for coming to the Sand Hills.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Coble, it is a beautiful area of the country, North Carolina.
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    I just had one real quick question to Mr. Hoell. You said you used inmate labor for some of the removal of the snow and debris.
    Mr. HOELL. Right.
    Mr. GILCHREST. How did that work out?
    Mr. HOELL. We generally use inmate labor to shovel snow on walkways at school buildings and public buildings and it is a good program, it works well for us. I mean, they I guess enjoy the exercise, but the bottom line is they are a good group of people that can go out and do that work under the supervision of law enforcement personnel, so they go out and do the work and it works very well for us.
    Mr. GILCHREST. That is great. Thank you very much. Mr. Coble.
    Mr. COBLE. Well, Ms. Branson just handed me a question that I would like to put to you all, probably to either/or. If DoD mobilizes assets prior to a Presidential declaration, are they then eligible to receive reimbursement for this activity once a disaster declaration occurs?
    Mr. SUITER. [Shakes head.]
    Mr. COBLE. They are not?
    Mr. SUITER. No.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Is that one of those areas that should be changed?
    Mr. COBLE. And that may be why I was given the information. I do not suggest that, but——
    Mr. SUITER. I wish I had a good answer for that. I have not been asked that before. They are not because we have no—they have performed a mission before there was any statutory authority to direct anything, so we cannot backdate a Presidential directive, you know. I will take a look and give you some advice back.
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    Mr. COBLE. And Wayne, as you mentioned earlier, I think, Mr. Hoell, that primary function of course is to provide defense for the country. I can appreciate that. But I can still hear those helpless pleas from these Sand Hillians down here, please—it is only 25 miles away, for gosh sakes have them send us something. And that haunts me to this day. That is why, folks, I continue to hammer on it and I know you all are getting tired of my hammering, but that is the source of my concern about it.
    Mr. SUITER. I am not tired of your hammering at all, sir, and I appreciate very much your concern. I wish I had a better answer for you, I just have to believe that——
    Mr. COBLE. Well, you gave me a truthful answer. I appreciate that.
    Mr. SUITER. I just have to believe that there must be some miscommunication here with the local commander because all across this country, Grand Forks, North Dakota, the military commander housed 25,000 people on his base, before we were even involved in it. So I just think we have a communication problem of some type. With the state's permission, we will be delighted to report back to you.
    Mr. HOELL. I would certainly add that during Hurricane Floyd, after the Presidential disaster declaration was granted, mercy, we had all kinds of support from military bases in the state of North Carolina.
    Mr. COBLE. Yeah.
    Mr. HOELL. With regard to air assets that we simply had to have to deliver resources, and it was a grand help.
    Mr. COBLE. Were you going to say something else, Mr. Suiter?
    Mr. SUITER. I wanted to say thank you very much for inviting me and letting me be a part of this hearing. I was impressed with the amount of paper that was over here on the corner awhile ago to get one of these things through. I thought I was doing a better job of cutting through the paperwork in here.
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    Mr. COBLE. I am glad Senator Hollings did not see that paper list there.
    Wayne, I am going to let you close out, but thank you all. Thanks to the first panel and for the interest that has been generated as a result of this hearing.
    Again, thank you, my friend, for what you did.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Thank you, Mr. Coble.
    I would like to ask unanimous consent, if you have not done it already, Howard, for Chairman Shuster and Tillie Fowler to have their statements submitted to the record.
    Mr. COBLE. Oh, I would be happy to do that. And as I say, in our Judiciary Committee or my Judiciary Subcommittee, I rarely administer the oath of office in swearing in witnesses, and I just inadvertently failed to do that on the first panel. So I stand corrected.
    Mr. GILCHREST. In the Subcommittee, which Mr. Coble was Chairman of in the previous Congress, the Coast Guard—I always failed to administer the oath, I guess we will have to change that when we get back to Washington.
    I want to thank the witnesses for their testimony and also I would like to thank the people of Moore County for their attention to detail on this important issue and for their really great hospitality to my being late, but making the trip down here.
    Mr. COBLE. Are you a golfer, by the way?
    Mr. GILCHREST. You know—no, I have never golfed in my life and I also, now that I understand how Mr. Coble plays tennis, will probably never play tennis with Mr. Coble.
    Mr. COBLE. I am not as good as he is implying, but I appreciate the implication.
    Mr. GILCHREST. If you have a good quarter horse down here, Mr. Coble, I will——
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    Mr. COBLE. We can get quarter horses for you, sure.
    Mr. SUITER. Or a Tennessee walking horse.
    Mr. GILCHREST. Or a Tennessee walking horse.
    Mr. COBLE. Yeah, he is an equestrian, I had forgotten that.
    Mr. GILCHREST. But I do want to thank everybody for their attention to this issue today and what we are going to try to do out of this hearing is to create a situation for the future where there is no uncertainty when these disasters strike and they are not expected.
    But again, Mr. Coble, I am very pleased to be in your district, thank all of you for your testimony and the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 1:01 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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