From time to time, we will make transcripts available to the press via email of interviews Senator Stevens has with the Alaska press based in Washington D.C. on issues related to the Commerce Committee. Below is such a transcript. This interview took place on Thursday, February 3, 2005. Alaska Press – February 3, 2005

Question: How do you think it went yesterday at Commerce (Committee hearing on the tsunami warning system, February 2, 2005)? Do you think the NOAA guys got the message that they need to get the system up and tell you?

Chairman Stevens: Yes, I visited with those people in Hawaii when I was there with Senator Inouye before we went into session, at the tsunami center there. And, I have been briefed by our people. I really didn’t know that two of the buoys had failed, one in 2003. And, I don’t think that there was really a sense of urgency about that until the tsunami. Once the Sri Lanka tsunami took place, the earthquake and the follow-on tsunami, I think there has been a general feeling of urgency about these warning systems. And, I do believe that we were right to ask those combined agencies and entities to get together to tell us how we can do better in alerting the world to the fact that there has been an event that could cause tsunamis. And, I do believe that in many parts of the world the wireless media is probably much better than depending upon a governmental structure to provide a warning system. Now, we have a built-in warning system. We have 911. We have our disaster programs in every state and most coastal communities have them, but I think this one showed people that the warning time often is going to be very short and there has to be some better system to get that out. I do believe that the request we made for them to come back and tell us what they think would be the best way to move now to establish a system – they got the information. I did check with them. We checked the machines. We looked right at the machines that showed the blip, that showed that they had it and the alarm went off. That alarm should have been going off around the world.

Question: And, all they did was say there’s nothing happening in the Pacific, you know, let’s

Chairman Stevens: No they didn’t, no they didn’t either. They notified our CINCPAC and within very few minutes the notice went out to the military in every one of those countries. But, the problem was the military did not have the ability to distribute that message. Whereas if they had had a way to give it to CNN and the Weather Channel and the wireless interconnections for the world, I think it would have gone out much faster. But, it will have to go out by wireless because if there’s really a bad earthquake, the cable could be gone.

Question: Professor Hansen also raised some things though. You know, he said the buoys and the tide gauges provide secondary information to the staff up in Alaska, more for the seismic monitoring and the water depth.

Chairman Stevens: Well, we asked them to put them together. I think the seismic, the earthquake center in Fairbanks, the seismic center, the volcano warning system, our tsunami warning system – there are buoys out there that can tell us the height of the water. And, although it may just be six or eight inches in the middle of the ocean, that would be very strange to see a wave that is 100 miles wide, and you know that’s a tsunami in the making for somebody. Those systems have to be tied together and have a warning device, just like the bell that went off when they had that spike, that should be heard around the world – there has been an event that could cause tsunamis. Then you start worrying where is it and who is it going to hit. Those are the simulations that the people in Oregon are running and the earthquake people in Fairbanks and the tsunami people in Hawaii. We’re doing a lot of experimentation there to see how we can do prediction. We’ve created now a Subcommittee of our Committee to deal with Disaster Prediction and Prevention and we’re going to zero in on that, just as we are going to zero in on Global Climate Change. We created ten subcommittees, those two in particular are in this area.

Question: It seems sort of like in between the lines of what Professor Hansen was saying yesterday, he seemed to be saying that there need to be more resources to put together the communication systems for the coastal villages in Alaska, that sort of thing.

Chairman Stevens: He’s talking about in our State. I think he’s right and I think we’re on our way. After all we’ve hooked up now almost every village to tele-medicine, tele-education. It’s just one step further to make that system work in terms of disaster warnings and we’re doing that. And, that’s why we want to hook into 911. 911 is very important. You know about the snow machiner that stood right in front of that totem pole with me. He went right into a crevasse and all he had with him was his cell phone, but it had satellite capability and he hit 911 and 20 minutes later he had a guard pulling him out of the crevasse. Now, the use of 911 is ubiquitous as far as Alaska is concerned and we have to hook this into a system. If you can receive calls, you ought to be able to send them out. That’s what we’re working on now. We’ve been working on it for some time. You can call 911, but the question is can 911 call you? And, that’s what we’ve put into work. Everyone that’s got a cell phone is going to be able to have a disaster warning soon.

Question: What is the next step for your bill? Are you going to have more hearings on it or are you going to mark it up and send it directly to the floor? What is sort of the timeline on you tsunami bill.

Chairman Stevens: Well, Senator Inouye and I talked about that yesterday. I don’t think we’ve gotten everything we want yet. We want the replies to what we asked them for yesterday. We gave them two weeks to get us the information about what we might do to facilitate the creation of a warning system integrating existing 911 civilian programming and military programming – how can we bring that about, not only for our country, but worldwide. So, we, I think, want to tie in the earthquake side, yet. We’re much more earthquake prone than the rest of the country, Alaska is, California is. Hawaii is hurricane prone. We want to tie together these warning systems so that there is a disaster warning system. Not just one for tsuanamis, another one earthquakes, and another one for hurricanes. We want a disaster warning system, is what we want. I don’t know whether we are going to have to have more hearings or not. We have not made up our minds on that.

Question: But, you’re going to make changes to your original bill, there’s no doubt about that?

Chairman Stevens: It is Senator Inouye’s bill originally, and I joined him and I intend to work with him as Co-Chairman. He originally intended it to be only tsunamis. I’m saying it should be disaster – tsunami plus – and I hope we can convince him to do that.

Question: After yesterday’s hearing what did you hear that made you realize that you need to add on to this bill? What specifically was the testimony that helped you?

Chairman Stevens: I’ll say this, I don’t think it was that, it was the Discovery Channel’s coverage of the tsunami, which they showed, really, that Sri Lanka was just like dropping a pebble into water, that that tsunami was going to go out to the rest of the world. And the question is, where does that take place. If one takes place in California, theoretically, we could get a tsunami in Alaska because we’re further out. We need to have better prediction of that. That also, we wanted to know, can they give us scenarios in the earthquake prone areas – where will tsunamis go. That’s the kind of research base – we’ve got money in Orgeon, we’ve got money in Fairbanks, we’ve got money in Hawaii. We’re looking into that already.

Question: Do you see doing something via the appropriations process to provide Hansen with what he was talking about yesterday? Because he said that 75 percent of communities have outdated technology, so there could be a lot of Federal money needed to update that.

Chairman Stevens: Well, I think we’ll look at it and decide whether that’s a Federal responsibility or a State responsibility. I don’t know yet whether that’s a Federal responsibility. I think it’s a question of doing the research to see if we can develop an area-wide, region-wide, nation-wide kind of warning system. That’s our responsibility. Whether the Federal government has the obligation to develop them all remains to be seen. I really think – as I said, we already put Federal money into developing wireless systems that are there now. That, plus Universal Service Fund money that covers schools, libraries, and health facilities throughout the State, provides us the backbone for sending a message to those areas. So, I think we can use Universal Service delivery through wireless, we can use the telephone systems to the extent we have it in tele-medicine and tele-education, and we can use satellite distribution. I think we still have a lot to do before we move a bill.

Question: I was just going to ask you about, it looks like the AT&T, you’re going to be looking at some mergers, you know AT&T being bought out for example, and I was just wondering if you have any generic thoughts on these or whether that’s something that will fall under your jurisdiction?

Chairman Stevens: We have asked that AT&T and SBC brief us in sort of a briefing session rather than a hearing to determine whether a hearing would be required. We will have such a meeting in the near future. That will be a meeting that Senator Inouye and I will conduct and we’ll invite the members of the Full Committee because we’ve kept communications at the Full Committee level. That is an inquiry, a briefing. We have those. For instance, we had a briefing on VOIP not too long ago. We’re going to have a series of briefings on various other technologies as we go forward, but I do think that that’s something that we ought to be better informed on. It’s sort of a surprise, I think, that this occurred. It does create, I think, about the third largest entity in the communications field.

Question: As a general matter, how do you feel about large corporations becoming even larger. How do you think that impacts, for example, your constituents? I mean this goes back, in 1984 the phone company was broken down, but this creates, it really goes back to almost a Ma Bell concept to a certain degree.

Chairman Stevens: My mind goes back to an Esquire cartoon. Did you ever see those? On the front page you’d see a circumstance and you’d turn the page and you’d see the reaction. This one was, a monarch standing on top of a castle looking down, he had a whole line of creditors standing there holding a bill in their hand, all screaming for payment. You turn the page, by the way there was an advisor standing next to that monarch. You turn the page and there’s this giant that has just broken down the front door and he says: consolidate your creditors, got any other good ideas. Now the question is whether bigness is bad per se in communications. We don’t know that, literally. That was the presumption of the judge in the AT&T situation where he required AT&T to be divested of certain functions and that led to the creation of what we called the Baby Bells at that time. And, in terms of subsequent, really, workload for the FCC, it obviously raised the workload to where they can’t complete everything they’ve got to do. One of the things we have to do is look at the FCC and find a way that it can do functionally and in a reasonable period of time the problems that Congress assigns to it. Because, with the diversification of so many different functions in communications, they just can’t keep up with the world right now.

Question: But, I mean, do you think bigness is bad, huge consolidations like that?

Chairman Stevens: I don’t have a feeling that consolidation is per se bad. The question is, what’s it affect on consumers, what’s its affect on future investment for improvement of the system, for research, what does it really affect in terms of the job market. How does it really impact the overall economy of the country? And, beyond that, anti-trust is not our jurisdiction, but the anti-trust concept does come into play, as to whether or not it’s eliminating competition. Those are very serious questions. That is why we are going to get briefed to see what really is going to happen. I understand that they will divest themselves of some elements of one company or the other and we need to know more about that.