TITLE: August 31, 2008 FEME Teleconference 
TOPIC (if needed): Hurricane Gustav 
DATE: August 31, 2008 
LENGTH: 37.5 minutes 
PARTICIPANTS: R. David Paulison, Administrator, FEMA 
Rear Admiral Sally Brice-O'Hara, Deputy Commandant for 
Operations, USCG 
Ed Hecker, United States Army Corps of Engineers 
Major General Richard J Rowe, Jr., United States Northern 
Command 
Kevin Kolevar, Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy 
Reliability, DOE 
ABBREVIATIONS: [U/I] = Unintelligible 
[PH] = Phonetic Spelling 
Speaker Transcription 
R. David Paulison: Good morning. I’m sorry I’m late. I’m trying to do these things 
on time, but our Videoconferences are getting longer (laughs) 
and longer. It seems like there’s a lot of things to wrap up. 
Yesterday I told you the hurricane was Category 5. And it was 
for a period of time, very short. In fact it went to a Category 4. 
And right now it’s a Category 3. Bill Reed was just on the phone. 
We briefed the President earlier. And we’re still hoping it will 
stay a Category 3 or less, there is some wind sheer there, but we 
have to plan on a Cat 3 or even a low Cat 4. 

1 



We’re focusing on the safety and security of everybody out there. 

We’re asking people to listen to their local authorities. There are 
still some people in the city, although it’s dwindling people. 
Again, I cannot emphasis enough the need to evacuate the city. 
There is plenty of transportation to be able to get out of the city. 
We’re still flying planes. We still have trains that are going out. 
The buses are still going out. And please listen to local 
authorities and move when you have to. 

I think I mentioned yesterday but just to remind that the 
President did sign emergency declarations, pre-landfall 
declarations for Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. And 
that does enable Federal aid to supplement the state in 
emergency protective measures so they can spend those dollars 
doing evacuations and opening shelters and making sure they 
have the right type of people on staff to do the job. 

We’ve been working very closely in coordination with the state 
and local governments and the volunteer agencies to be 
prepared for the potential impact of Hurricane Gustav. Beginning 
as early as last Tuesday we’ve had numerous Federal agencies 
on ground making sure resources and personnel were there in a 

2 



safe place to respond. Right now we’re focusing on evacuations, 
that is the key right now, making sure that we can do everything 
possible to get everyone out of harm’s way. 

There were several issues that came up through the night. We 
had a couple of hospitals that had not planned to evacuate and 
decided they did wanted to evacuate. So we had to get extra 
resources in there, particularly airframe resources to get those 
special needs people out of there. We also had several nursing 
homes, quite a few nursing homes, who were supposed to have 
had a plan in place to evacuate their patients to other nursing 
homes and did not do so until the last minute when they found 
out that this was a larger storm than anticipated. They have 
asked for help evacuating those people, most of whom are 
bedridden. 

We worked through the night with NorthCom and TransCom and 
others to make sure we get enough aircraft on the ground. The 
Texas National Guard gave us five C-130’s and a couple of other 
aircraft and several helicopters and it looks now we’re going to 
have enough aircraft to get all those special needs people out of 
harm’s way to do that. 

3 



We set up our National Emergency Family Registry and Locator 
System. As you remember during Hurricane Katrina we didn’t 
have a system like that in place and it was very difficult for 
families to locate family members or to find children, because the 
child locator system is a part of that. And that’s on 
www.fema.gov website. They can register for that. And there’s 
a toll free number to register for that also. That’s 1 800 588 
9822. You have to register to make sure if you want your family 
members to find you. So that’s 1 800 588 922 – excuse me, 1 
800 588 9822 … lack of sleep, folks. 

Now we also have another storm out there. We’re monitor 
Tropical Storm Hannah which is running along the coast of 
Florida. We don’t know exactly where it’s going to make landfall, 
we’re a little bit unsure right now, but we have to watch it very 
carefully. We have a couple of slideshows up. The first slide 
shows where some of our pre-positioned stuff that we have. We 
have thousands of meals, we’ve got liters of waters, tarps, 
blankets, cots and generators and are all pre-positioned at more 
than 15 different locations. And there in locations where we can 
move very quickly into wherever this storm happens to make 

4 



landfall. 

We have another slide to show you. We have people pre-
positioned and where all of our supplies are, our instant 
management teams, our joint field offices, emergency response 
teams and right now we have 18 Urban Search and Rescue 
Teams pre-positioned and we may very well open some more 
up. So I told you before that we were going to be ready for this 
storm. I think we’re showing you that we are ready for this 
storm. Again, I can’t stop the damage from happening. We can’t 
stop the storm from coming in. But what we can do is be as 
ready as possible and making sure we’re ready, the states are 
ready and the local community is ready. 

When we briefed the President earlier we had all four governors 
on the Videoconference. And we were a few minutes late getting 
in and when we got in they were all talking to each other about 
how they could help each other. A lot of cooperation going on 
there. I’m very, very please to see the coordination and 
cooperation that’s not only going on from the Federal, state to 
local level, but also from state to state to share resources. So 
anyway, we’ll go ahead. Admiral? 

5 



Rear Admiral Sally 
Brice-O’Hara. 

Thank you. Good afternoon. I’m Admiral Sally Brice-O’Hara, the 
Coast Guard’s Deputy Commandant for Operations. First I want 
to assure you that there is very strong Federal collaboration 
within the Department of Homeland Security and beyond. We 
have unity of effort and have taken tremendous proactive steps 
to heighten readiness to respond to this very dangerous storm as 
it approaches our coast. 

We stress early preparations by individuals, particularly mariners. 

We urge all mariners to heed every warning, take precautions 
and get yourself into safe havens or evacuate as local officials 
are telling you to do. And certainly we have strong partnerships 
with our state and local authorities and the private sector as the 
Captains of the Port of the Coast Guard work very carefully in the 
ports that are likely to be impacted to ensure that all of the 
commercial vessels and facilities are prepared and ready as the 
weather approaches. 

There are a number of things that we’ve taken as proactive 
steps. We have issued broadcast mariner’s notices so that the 
public is forewarned. We’ve had pre-storm flights that have 
traversed the area to ensure that we have a good idea of who’s 

6 



out on the water and again it’s an opportunity to relay information 
to those boaters and commercial vessels that are on the water. 
And, as I mentioned, we’ve worked very closely with industry. 

We worked through different phases of port readiness. There 
are plans that are in place. We are following those plans with the 
commercial entities. Ultimately when we’re 12 hours away from 
tropical storm or hurricane force weather, then the ports will 
close. And we anticipate the ports in the New Orleans area will 
be closed by later today as will Mobile. We have already 
secured the ports in Pascagoula and the Gulf port and we are 
watching very closely the Houston Galveston area depending 
upon the final track of the storm. 

Coast Guard members have been evacuated as necessary but 
we will not lose continuity of command. Our Eighth District 
Commander who has the regional responsibility for the storm 
area has relocated his command center and staff to St. Louis. 
He personally is in the Mobile area and will make an over flight 
as soon as it is safe to do so after the storm passes. 

We are working very closely with FEMA. We have Coast Guard 

7 



Major General 
Richard J. Rowe, 
Jr.: 

officials embedded with FEMA, with the state EOC’s, with the 
Mine and Mineral Management Service, with the Army Corps of 
Engineers. We’re working very closely with the Department of 
Defense, particularly with NorthCom, and we are ready for this 
storm. 

Again, I’ll close by emphasizing that mariners have to heed the 
advice, take precautions, find safe havens, stay out of this 
weather. And we’ll be the first one on scene as soon as it’s safe 
to get our aircraft and vessels out to start the assessments. Post 
storm we’ll focus on search and rescue and then getting the 
ports and commerce moving again. Thank you. 
Good afternoon. I’m Major General Rich Rowe and I’m 
representing United States NorthCom. U.S. NorthCom is 
responsible for providing the Department of Defense’s unique 
capabilities for disaster response in support of FEMA and the 
Secretary of Defense has given General Renuart, the NorthCom 
Commander verbal authorization to respond to the FEMA 
request at this point. 

We are also doing that in close coordination with the National 
Guard Bureau. At this time NorthCom is closely monitoring 

8 



Hurricane Gustav and prepared to respond for requests. I’d like 
to give you a couple of examples of that response at this point. 

Major General Besilica, who some may remember that name, 
who was the Commander of the 256th Brigade of Louisiana at the 
Katrina struck and returned from Iraq to take command of Task 
Force Pelican. His current assignment is as an Operational 
Command Post Commander for Army North of U.S. NorthCom. 
With his Operational Command Post he is locating at the 
England airpark Alexander and Louisiana are prepared to 
provide Commander control of Title 10 deployed military forces. 

U.S. NorthCom working with the United States Transportation 
Command has provided contracted airlift, general airlift, to begin 
to move up to 16,000 general population passengers and cargo. 
The airlift is moving passengers from New Orleans to Nashville, 
Tennessee, San Antonio, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky and Port 
Smith, Arkansas. We expect during the hours of today to have 
the Canadian Force’s C-17 to be added to that airflow provided 
the Canadian Armed Forces. 

Major General Hank Morrow who is the Commander of Airforce’s 

9 



North and is our Search and Rescue Commander for our search 
and rescue over the land was positioned in capability at Keesler 
Air force Base and Jackson International Guard Base both in 
Mississippi. These capabilities will include extended range and 
night capable aircraft to support search and rescue if that should 
be required over land. 

Aero medical evacuation capabilities as mentioned by Chief 
Paulison, we had ten missions planned today to move 1,000 
patients. We currently anticipate that we will be able to execute 
13 air missions today that will move up to 1,300 patients that 
require some type of medical assistance. That could be done. 
And these operations will continue in Louisiana and Texas as 
long as we can operate off the runways given the wind. 

The governor of Texas has requested 20 active duty aircraft, 
rotary winged aircraft for the State of Texas and eight medium lift 
helicopters and 12 heavy lift helicopters have been provided to 
Texas out of 24 that were ready for U.S. NorthCom and U.S. 
NorthCom is making steps to replenish the reserve to be if 
needed. 

10 



Defense Coordinating Officers have been activated and are in 
place with Federal representatives and state representatives, 
emergency managers in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and 
Texas. In addition are emergency preparedness liaison officers 
are located with Region 6 in Austin, Texas and Region 4 in 
Atlanta. And we have an additional Defense Coordinating Officer 
capability located with the FEMA planning group that is looking 
behind Gustav at the potential of the current Tropical Storm 
Hannah. 

When I talked two days ago we had three military installations as 
FEMA National Logistic Staging areas. We now have five. 
These include Maxwell Airforce Base in Alabama, Columbus 
Airforce Base in Mississippi, the Naval Air Station at Meridian, 
Mississippi, Fort Rucker, Alabama and Fort Benning, Georgia. 
We also have taken the steps to enforce protection of our 
Department of Defense capabilities that are within the potential 
strike zone. This includes Marine Forces Reserve, their 
headquarters is in New Orleans. They have conducted their 
continuity of operations move from New Orleans to Fort Worth, 
Texas and are operational there. They are dual hated as Marine 
Forces North. And so they would be part of an active duty 

11 



response if it was needed. 

Additionally hurricane evacuation measure for Department of 
Defense ships along the coast and aircraft in the potential strike 
zone have all been tracked in those assets, have been moved to 
safety or properly lashed to the safeguard additionally. Thank 
you very much. 

Kevin Kolevar: 
Good afternoon. I’m Kevin Kolevar, Assistant Secretary of 
Energy for electricity delivery and energy reliability. The 
progressive shut down of petroleum and gas facilities in the path 
of Hurricane Gustav is continuing in an organized and expected 
fashion. Before I begin I want to note that the temporary 
disruption of oil and gas production in the Gulf is a regular and 
well-practiced event. 

It happened several times a year in response to tropical storms 
and hurricanes. And if history is any indicator, we will be doing 
this at least once more this year. 

On Friday a number of oil companies began the process of 
suspending operations and withdrawing personnel from off shore 
platforms. That process should be complete. The Gulf region 

12 



produced approximately 1.3 million barrels per day, which is 
about 1/4th of U.S. crude production. As of yesterday MMS 
reports that 96 percent of production is now [I/U]. Natural gas 
production is effected to a lesser extent. Gas production for the 
year stands at 7.4 billion cubic feet per day, which is about 15 
percent of the U.S. natural gas production. Eighty-two percent of 
this production is now shut in[ph]. 

With respect to importation. The U.S. imports approximately 5.6 
million barrels per day, or 56 percent of the U.S. crude imports 
through the Gulf. Imports of crude and refined product are 
suspended until the storm passes. There are 32 refineries in the 
Gulf Coast with a capacity of 7.1 million barrels per day. The 
companies operating these refineries are closely monitoring the 
storm as they decide whether to limit or halt operations. Thus far 
we’re seeing those facilities located closer to the coast, this is 
really in the lower Mississippi River and Lake Charles area 
shutting down. 

Those to the north, most significantly, Exxon Mobil’s Baton 
Rouge facility are maintaining operations. The Department of 
Energy will produce the aggregate shut down numbers 

13 



tomorrow. Turning to sprow[PH], three of the four sprow sites 
have suspended operations until the storm has passed. Brian 
Mound remains operational. The remaining facilities will return to 
operations once Gustav has passed. The sprow is currently 
filled to a record level of 707 million barrels. It can be released at 
a rate of 4.4 million barrels per day. 

Turning to inventories. The petroleum stock situation is excellent 
in pad three which is the Gulf region and in the U.S. Weekly 
crude stocks are the highest for the year in the United States. 
And weekly gasoline stocks are normal for this time of year in 
both pad three and the United States. For natural gas platforms, 
we have 22 natural gas processing plants located in the eight 
parishes along the Gulf totaling 13.2 billion cubic feet per day. 
Many of the plants have shut down operations due to the shut in 
of gathering lines and supplying gas to the facilities are due to 
the mandatory evacuation for the parish. Henry Hub is down 
since the Saving Pipeline System declared forced Majeure and 
evacuated personnel from the area. 

In summary we expect to see some disruptions to fuel supply 
when we undertake a significant evacuation. However, absent 

14 



R. David Paulison: 
Ed Hecker: 

significant physical damage to the region’s systems, the record 
level of supply existing in the strategic petroleum reserve today 
coupled with the inventories held both off shore and on shore by 
the petroleum sector should ensure these disruptions are 
localized and temporary. Thank you. 
Okay. Questions. Oh, I’m sorry, we left the most important guys 
out. I’m sorry, guy. 
Not a problem. Good afternoon. I’m Ed Hecker, Chief of the 
Homeland Security Office for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

 Let me first say that the entire Corps of Engineer’s family, many 
of whom live and work in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast 
send our thoughts and prayers to all the people living in the path 
of Hurricane Gustav and prepare for a hurricane’s landfall. 

Our first priority is public safety. We continue to work very 
closely with state and local emergency managers and levee 
boards and our sister Federal agencies to assist to prepare for 
Hurricane Gustav’s landfall. The Corps is deploying teams from 
across the nation to the Gulf Coast to assist in missions assigned 
by FEMA across the four declared states for debris removal, 
commodities procurement and delivery, temporary emergency 
power, temporary housing, temporary roofing, infrastructure 

15 



assessment and support to urban search and rescue. These 
teams are pre-positioned to respond immediately after Hurricane 
Gustav makes landfall. 

The New Orleans area now has the best flood protection in its 
history. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 the Corps. has 
completed the repair and restoration of 220 miles of floodwalls 
and levees. Specifically floodwalls have been reinforced at 
numerous locations. Eyewalls have been replaced by stronger 
T-walls as breach sites. Floodwalls have been armored and 
transition points strengthened between floodwalls and levees. 

The gates and temporary pumping states at the three outfall 
canals along Lake Pontchartrain has been tested and are 
working. We have computerized systems remotely monitoring 
water levels in the canals. Interior pump stations have been 
repaired and improved, 30 overall. Eighteen completed, eight 
others in construction and four in design. Storm proofing those 
pump stations is in progress with 26 projects underway, six have 
been completed. 

As a flood fighting measure the Corps. has placed sand filled 

16 



HESCO baskets along an 1,800 foot section of the inner harbor 
navigation canal to provide further reinforcement should we have 
high stages. The Corps has 400 large sandbags, 4,700 pounds 
each filled and ready for use for emergency repairs. We have 
fortunately many Corps contractors that are working on the 
system improvement center available to immediately assist with 
emergency repair. So we are pre-positioned with resources, 
contractors and of course Take Force Hope which was 
established shortly after Hurricane Katrina that is in place and 
ready to go into action immediately post landfall. 

We have made significant progress in reducing risk in New 
Orleans, but major hurricanes may still cause widespread 
flooding. There is still risk associated with a major hurricane. So 
all the preparations being made are very, very critical. 

We are working closely with state and local agencies to 
continuously monitor and assess the levee system performance. 

And we’ll respond quickly to areas of distress once the storm 
passes. I just want to emphasize, this is not just the Corps of 
Engineers. This is a unified team between the Corps, state and 
local agencies to preassigned areas of that system to make sure 

17 



R. David 
Paulison(?): 
Eric Lifton[PH]: 

R. David 
Paulison(?): 
Eric Lifton: 
R. David 
Paulison(?): 
Eric Lifton: 
R. David Paulison: 
Major General 
Richard J. Rowe, 
Jr.: 
Eric Lifton: 


R. David Paulison: 
Eric Lifton: 

R. David Paulison: 
that we’re monitoring it’s condition and we’re prepared to rapidly 
respond together. Thank you very much. 
We’ll start with some questions. We’ll ask that you identify who 
you are and where you’re from. Sir? 
General, I just wanted to be clear. 
Can you identify who you are and where you’re from? 
Eric Lifton from The New York Times. 
Thank you. 
The request from Texas, all of that equipment, the aircraft and 
the helicopters have all been supplied already. 
Yes. The ones from Texas. I’m sorry, go ahead. 
Yes. 


Okay. And what role did FEMA play in resolving the bus problem 
in New Orleans? Did it play a role or was that the state and local 
government that resolved that issue? 
It was all of us working together. You’re talking about the fact 
that some buses didn’t show up? 
Yeah. 
Yeah. It was a joint effort. I think 150 or 200 of the original 700 
buses showed up, but then the state gave buses, 400 buses, 
from the state school board and then New Orleans got buses 
also from this. So they ended up with almost the same amount 


18 



Eric Lifton(?): 

R. David Paulison: 
Kate Folwer[PH]: 

R. David Paulison: 
of buses they needed for that transport, but it took an effort to 
pull them all together. But … 
[I/U] buses? 
No, we did not. We had a contract in place and, in fact, I should 
back up – we did provide some buses, but I want to give credit to 
the city and the state for going out and getting those extra buses, 
they actually worked very hard to do that. Yes? 
Kate Folwer with CNN. Mr. Paulison, the overall plan and the 
coordination and the communication, how has that changed 
since yesterday’s briefing and has Tropical Storm Hannah have 
any contributing factor into that? 
Other than stress? (Laughs) No, Hannah hasn’t had an impact 
on us yet. We’re still watching it and we do have teams in North 
Carolina. We have some urban search and rescue teams pre-
staged in Atlanta so we can pull them either way if something 
happens. But the planning has stayed the same. The 
coordination and the communication has stayed the same. In 
fact that communication system worked extremely well last night. 

We had all the players in place. So we worked all night on the 
fact that there were several hospitals that now decided that they 
were going to evacuate instead of sheltering in place. That threw 
several hundred extra patients at us that they were not 

19 



anticipating. And a lot of these people were critical care patients. 

We work with NorthCom very closely to find extra aircraft to 
make sure we were coordinated and then also we had some 
nursing homes, like I said earlier, that did not do what they were 
supposed to do. So that put an extra burden us, those extra 
patients. So that communication system we set up out of 
working out of a unified command system out of the joint field 
office really paid off because everybody was there to resolve the 
issue. 

Anytime you have a disaster like this there’s going to be glitches. 

Things are going to go wrong, things aren’t going to go as 

smoothly as you plan and it’s how you resolve those that really 

determines the outcome. The fact that we had a bump in the 

road and we were able to get on top of it and get it fixed and find 

a plan to make sure that we took care of people, that was the 

important thing. 

Kate Folwer: 
Any bumps in the road now that it’s getting closer and closer to 
landfall? I mean is there any concern with evacuations and 
dealing with these glitches that people aren’t heeding your 
warning and you aren’t going to get out in time? 

20 



R. David Paulison: 
Renee Turner[PH]: 

R. David Paulison: 
Renee Turner: 
R. David Paulison: 
Renee Turner: 
Well, I don’t think there’s that. I think we have plenty of 
opportunity to get people out in time, it’s those who are choosing 
not to get out concerns me. There are people that I’ve heard 
saying they’re going to ride this storm out. That is not a wise 
thing to do. This is a very dangerous storm. It could have a 
significant tidal surge. The west bank of the levees was not 
tested during Hurricane Katrina. There were some mature 
witnesses along the entire perimeter, several places along the 
perimeter of the levees that have weaknesses and it could either 
fail or be over topped. So we want everybody out of the city. It 
does not make sense to put you, your family or the first 
responders at risk by just sitting there when there’s plenty of 
opportunity to get out. 
Are you saying that … 
Ma’am, can you give us your name and … 
Oh, I’m say, Renee Turner, NBC. 
Thank you. 
I understand that New Orleans has stopped some of the public 
buses or they’re a part of the active evacuation as of probably 
now. What happens to people who are left after that? And also 
my second question is what provisions were made for people 
who have pets? 

21 



R. David Paulison: 
Unidentified 
Reporter (Male): 

The first question is – yeah, we heard that the city was shutting 
down the internal bus route, or their personal bus route, they 
have to go park those buses somewhere and take care of those 

– remember what happened during Katrina. We saw buses 
under water, we didn’t want that to happen. But our buses are 
still running and still moving out of the city. So people are getting 
to the collection points, there’s still people coming and we’re still 
moving those buses and we will continue to provide bus service 
as long as there are people or until the winds do not allow us to 
operate any longer. So that will continue on. People have had 
ample opportunity to get out. 
And I heard Mayor Nagin today give a very strong message that 
no one should stay in the city and there should be no excuses, in 
his words, no excuse for not evacuating. And the second piece 
is that we do have pet shelters open. And the pet shelters are 
not with the people who own the pets, it’s near by. But we have 
vans that are taking those cages. We’re putting the pets into 
shelters so they’ll be taken care of and can be reconnected with 
their owners very quickly after the storm. We did not do that in 
Katrina. 
[I/U]. 

22 



R. David Paulison: 
Lisa Chen[PH]: 

R. David Paulison: 
Kerri Johnson[PH]: 

You know, I’m not sure exactly how many we have in there. I 
think we’re capable of handling like 3,500 but I don’t know what 
the population is right now. But I saw several people when we 
were getting to the videos, there were buses where there were 
pets in cages and waiting put them in a van to go to the center. 
ABC News, Lisa Chen. Just a quick question regarding Mayor 
Nagin’s press conference today. He announced that there was 
going to be curfew at dusk. If there are still people in New 
Orleans that want to leave that haven’t taken advantage, will 
honor his curfew and I guess what I’m really asking what will 
people do in terms of the curfew. 
Well (laughs) we have no control over the Mayor’s curfew. But 
we’re going to continue providing buses. I don’t think they’ll stop 
us from busing people out or getting our buses. I think what he’s 
trying to say is get on the bus and get out of town. You should 
not be out wandering the streets. Because quite frankly there is 
very little traffic in downtown New Orleans right now. Almost 
everybody is gone. It’s very light and we’re assuming that most 
everybody will have either gotten themselves out or got on some 
of our buses or got on one of the trains or got on an airplane to 
get out of town. Yes, Ma’am? 
Kerri Johnson from The Washington Post. My understanding is 

23 



R. David Paulison: 
Unidentified 
Reporter (Male): 

the latest predictions from the Hurricane Center as of 11 o’clock 
today indicated that walls of water fewer than five feet were 
predicted for New Orleans. That would seem to be less than 
Katrina. Are you making an evaluation now about how risky that 
… ? 
I heard the 11 o’clock report and I heard there was five feet for 
Alabama when the Alabama governor asked. But the tidal surge 
that we were told today for the New Orleans area could be up to 
around 12, 14 feet. So there is a potential for over topping. 
Some of the levees on the west bank are I think at eight feet. So 
it doesn’t mean they’re going to but the potential is there and, 
again, you know, this storm, when it came across Cuba didn’t 
reform as quickly as we thought it was going to. It ended up a 
little ragged. But now it’s starting to reform itself. So it is moving 
faster, is a good thing, I mean, it cuts our timeline down for 
evacuation. The faster it moves the quicker it gets across that 
warm water and the less problem we’ll have with tidal surge. But 
the prediction for tidal surge is really an educated guess. When 
it actually happens, we’ll figure it out. 
How serious in terms of evacuation and displacement – are you 
going to do emergency cash assistance like you did during 
Katrina? 

24 



R. David Paulison: 
Kate Fowler: 

R. David Paulison: 
Probably not unless there’s a real need for it. We’re doing debit 
cards, that’s for sure. When we start doing our – we have an 
ability now to … we know where everybody is, everyone who 
went to our shelters anyway. And we can register people there. 
And if there’s some need to get some immediate cash to 
somebody who has lost their home, then perhaps we can do 
that. 

If there’s a need for it, we’ll look at it. Right now it doesn’t appear 
there is a need for it. 
Kate Fowler, CNN. Is there any plans to deal with existing FEMA 
trailers in the New Orleans area like in progress in order to move 
them more inward? To get them out of the threatened zone? 
We keep hearing they could be very dangerous projectiles in 
hurricane strength winds. 
Well, they are tied down. They’re not a safe place to stay. They 
can come apart during a storm. There is … probably 14,000 of 
them left. There’s no way we could move that many that quickly. 

So we’re not going to do that. But they’re not any other 
manufactured housing. We don’t have the bulk of them in the 
United States. They’re all over the country. And so a lot of 
things can become projectiles. Roof tile, plywood on a roof, 

25 



Unidentified Male: 

Operator: 

Spencer Shiu: 

everything else. So I don’t, you know, I don’t anticipate that 
being a big issue. Again, logistically it’s impossible to move 
them. They are tied down according to code. They should not 
become projectiles. But again, I don’t want people to stay in 
them either. So. 
We’ll take a few phone call questions from the telephone line. 
So operator, if you have any questions, can you please let us 
know? 
Yes. Thank you. Just for the parties on the line, if you would like 
to ask a question, please press star then one on your touch-tone 
phone. We do have a question from Spencer Shiu[PH] from The 
Washington Post. Please ask your question. 
Thanks. Can you interpret the latest forecast in terms of the 
projected impact area? There is some suggestion that it may be 
headed a little bit west of homa. Is that going to be worse for the 
row or southern parishes and perhaps better for the city areas? 
And then the second follow up on the people who were 
evacuated by the government, can you detail how many were 
taken to which places? Where they’re being housed? And what 
provisions are being made for them and maybe a discussion 
about attempts to register them and what happened with the 
buses and are the automated FEMA systems up and running 

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now? Thank you. 

R. David Paulison: 
Spencer Shiu: 

R. David Paulison: 
The first question is the strongest winds are on the northeast 
quadrant of the hurricane. So based on wherever it goes, the 
most damage will probably occur on that side of the storm. 
Where it’s actually going to make landfall, right now they’re 
predicting just to the west of the City of New Orleans. But Bill 
Reed said it could be anywhere from the Florida, Alabama line to 
the Texas, Louisiana line. It depends on where it’s going to go in 
the last few minutes. And we were reminded by Governor Riley 
and Governor Barbour this morning that the last two hurricanes 
had followed that same track when they got close to shore, they 
made a very sharp right turn and went into Mississippi and 
Alabama and didn’t go into Louisiana. 

So again, the landfall will happen when it happens and where it 
happens. And your second question was, Spencer? 
The people who were evacuated by the government. Can you 
detail how many were taken? To which places? Where they’re 
staying? What provisions are being made for them? And maybe 
discuss how well the FEMA registration systems were working 
since the issue with the buses at boarding. 
We do have that, but I don’t have those figures in front of me, 

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Spencer Shiu: 
Unidentified Male: 
Operator: 

Kathryn Herridge: 

R. David Paulison: 
Spencer, but we could get those to you about how many exactly 
were evacuated. We can tell you how many were evacuated by 
bus, how many were by train and how many were done by air. 
We can get that to you very quickly. 
Got you. And just where they are. Thanks. 
Operator, next question. We have time for two more. 
Thank you. Our next question will come from Kathryn 
Herridge[PH] from Fox News. Please go ahead. 
Sir, can you just do us all a favor and copy all of those statistics 
to all of us maybe in the release? And I may have just missed 
this at the top, please. What’s the expected timeframe for 
tomorrow with the storm? And if you had to lay out your five key 
concerns in the next 12 hours, what are they and why? 
That sounds like an essay question. (LAUGHTER) Right now 
we’re predicting storm force winds to make landfall sometime 
tonight. Probably we’re shooting right around maybe midnight or 
a little after that. And according to the speed of it, we should get 
the eye of the land sometime tomorrow morning. Excuse me, 
Tuesday morning, right? Or tomorrow afternoon. It will be early 
Tuesday morning or late Monday night. I’m trying to remember 
what day I’m in now. 

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Kathryn Herridge: 

R. David Paulison: 
My concerns are one; the … the reflating of the city, if that 
happens, it will be catastrophic for the city. Two, I worry a lot 
about people who did not evacuate and are trying to ride the 
storm out. And I guess three would be rescues in the aftermath. 

Those are our next planning steps. It will be the rescue piece 
and then we’ll go on from there. We’re doing 30 days at a time in 
our planning to see where we’re going to be. So those are my 
big concerns. 
Just a follow up on that last point, if I may. Just give us a 
thumbnail sketch of what the rescue plan in the aftermath is 
going to look like based on the information that you have now. 
Well, what we have right now is we have the Coast Guard will 
probably the first units in because they’re standing by with their 
helicopters. CBP is there with their helicopters to start search 
and rescue. We have 19 urban search and rescue teams, 18 
urban search and rescue teams that are standing by to move in 
to do search and rescue. NorthCom has troops standing very 
closely by to move in to do search and rescue. So we pretty 
much have it surrounded to move in very quickly. We don’t want 
to delay in the search and rescue piece. So as soon as the 
winds die down to safely move in, we have swift boat rescue 
teams standing by ready to get into it if the city does flood. So 

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Unidentified Male: 
Operator: 
Jeff Blitz: 
R. David Paulison: 
Jeff Blitz: 
R. David Paulison: 
there’s a lot of people out there waiting for the storm to pass. 
Once the eye makes landfall and we have hurricane force winds, 
there’s not much else to do except stand by and be ready to 
move very quickly. 
Operator, we have time for one last question. Thank you. 
Thank you. Our next question will come from Jeff Blitz[PH] from 
Bloomberg News. Please go ahead. 
Yeah. Hi. Could you talk about how many National Guard and 
other troops that you have on the ground there. On the Gulf 
Coast region in general and specifically in New Orleans. And I 
just wanted to clarify, are you saying that the current effort that 
you believe you will be able to get all those people out of the 
nursing homes? 
That’s correct. The way it looks right now, everybody that is a 
special needs patient that needs transporting, we have enough 
airlift on the ground to be able to do that. And the report that we 
just received from the National Guard a few minutes ago, there’s 
over 10,000 National Guard troops on the ground. 
That’s throughout the Gulf Coast? 
That’s correct. 
Jeff Blitz: 
Unidentified Male: 
Okay. 
Thank you very much, Operator. I thank our speakers. When 

30 



Unidentified 
Reporter (Male): 

R. David Paulison: 
Unidentified 
Reporter (Male): 

R. David Paulison: 
Unidentified Male: 

they exit, I’ll stay behind to spell out all the names and give 
further instructions. Thanks guys, good questions. 
How many active in the military and the back up of the National 
Guard, do you know how many are prepared to respond? 
We can get that info. The active duty military is all that is 
stationed in that area. And eventually we wouldn’t need that in 
the areas of [I/U] are prepared to deploy. 
How big is that? 
It’s about 2,500 to 3,000 depending on [I/U]. It’s the second 
brigade combat team tek mountain division. There are three 
amphibious ships from the Navy that will sorte out of the Port of 
Northfolk. They vary in size. It’s the Baton, the Nassau and the 
Plontz[PH]. And additional capabilities can be floated as need. 
The first boots on the ground will be primarily the National Guard. 

 It will be capabilities that the Department of Defense to provide 
beyond that to include the search and rescue as I described as 
well as overhead platform capabilities that will assist FEMA in the 
local jurisdictions and seeing what the strike zone impact is. So 
the initial assessment … 
Ladies and gentlemen, I have to cut it off in courtesy of the folks 
on the phone to get the news out to them. So I appreciate that 
and thank you very much. 

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(END OF AUDIO FILE) 


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