Advisory of December 6, 2005 announcing the hearing

WITNESSES

McCrery, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State of Louisiana

American Red Cross, Joseph C. Becker

Baton Rouge Area Foundation, John G. Davies

Salvation Army of America, Major Todd Hawks,

U.S. Government Accountability Office, Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Managing Director, Education, Workforce and Income Security

American Institute of Philanthropy, Daniel Borochoff

National Spinal Cord Injury Association, Marcie Roth

Resources for Independent Living, Yavonka Archaga

Wyatt, Johnny G., City Marshal and Homeland Security Director, Bossier City, Louisiana

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

American Arts Alliance, statement

National Council of Nonprofit Associations, Audrey Alvarado, statement

National Fraternal Congress of America, statement

Rotary International, Evanston, IL, Christine Neely, statement

TO REVIEW THE RESPONSE BY CHARITIES TO HURRICANE KATRINA

U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Ways and Means,
Subcommittee on Oversight,
Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3:05 p.m., in room 1100, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Jim Ramstad (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.

[The advisory announcing the hearing follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The hearing will come to order. 

I want to welcome everyone to today's hearing on the response of charities to Hurricane Katrina. 

As we all know, the whole world watched as Hurricane Katrina caused unprecedented devastation along the Gulf Coast, displacing more than 1 million people, and causing over $100 billion in property damage.  This destruction has required a massive response from Federal, State, and local governments. 

The Hurricane has also inspired the Nation's charities to make an historic effort.  Americans have made this effort possible by giving or pledging over $2.6 billion to help the victims of this terrible disaster.  Charities have provided critically important assistance, ranging from food, shelter and cash assistance to counseling and job training.  This is the single largest charitable response to a disaster in our Nation's history. 

This Subcommittee has the responsibility to review the activities of charities, to see where things worked, where they didn't work, and where the response can be made more effective.  This Subcommittee, as some of you will remember, held a similar review after the September 11th attacks, and highlighted areas in which charities needed to improve their response to disasters.  I hope our effort today can lead to further improvements as well. 

Several of the witnesses today will tell extremely inspiring stories.  We will hear about volunteers who dropped what they were doing so they could help take care of hurricane victims.  We will hear about churches and synagogues providing shelter and food to people who had nothing but the clothes on their backs. 

We will hear about Americans generously donating to the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and other organizations to provide needed cash assistance to Hurricane victims; as I said earlier, $2.6 billion in monetary contributions by the American people. 

Notwithstanding the tremendous humanitarian response, other witnesses will describe some significant shortcomings in the charitable response.  Today's hearing will really focus on three main concerns.  First, how coordination between charities can be improved.  In massive disasters like this one, charities both large and small get involved in the response.  Their collective resources, capabilities and efforts obviously must be effectively coordinated. 

Four years ago, this Subcommittee discussed the problem of coordination among charities responding to the September 11th attacks.  Hurricane Katrina has unfortunately shown that much work still remains. 

The second area of concern we will examine is how all Americans can have access to and receive assistance from charitable organizations during disasters.  It is important that the Red Cross and other charities not forget communities and individuals who are harder to reach or who need special attention, minority populations, people with disabilities, and low-income people. 

Today we will hear from two witnesses representing people with disabilities, which are of major interest to me, and I know other Members of the Subcommittee.  These two witnesses will describe the experiences of individuals with disabilities during the disaster, and believe me, some of those experiences are downright shocking.  We need to hear what the Red Cross and others are planning to do to ensure that underserved populations are not forgotten or neglected during the next disaster.  We always know, unfortunately, there will be the next disaster. 

The third area of concern is that we need to ensure that charitable dollars are not lost to fraud.  While disasters bring out the best in most people, they also bring out the worst in others.  In some cases, criminals have pretended to be charities and have stolen money intended for actual charities.  In other cases, people pretending to be victims have taken advantage of charities and taken money that could have been used to help actual victims. 

The New York Times reported that the Red Cross distributed $32 million in cash to residents in and around Jackson, Mississippi, even though many of them had experienced little or no significant property damage.  One pawn shop owner in Jackson, Mississippi, told the New York Times that many aid recipients cashed relief checks at his shop and immediately bought jewelry, guns, DVDs and electronics. 

The owner of a Western Union branch in Jackson was quoted as saying, "Surely the Red Cross has to have a better use of funds, unless they just have money they are trying to get rid of for some reason."

Stories like this may discourage donors from giving money for relief efforts; therefore, we have to understand what the Red Cross and other charities are doing to ensure that their aid is going to the people who actually need it.  If this hearing helps document where charities fell short in serving the hurricane victims, it can help ensure these problems do not occur again.  If Americans do not have confidence that their donations are being used wisely, they may not be so generous when the next disaster strikes. 

This morning I am sure many of you noted that the American Red Cross announced the resignation of its president, Marsha J. Evans.  I would like to thank Ms. Evans for her dedication and hard work. 

I also, quite frankly, appreciated Ms. Evans' candid acknowledgment in September that the Red Cross's responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had been "uneven," and that these natural disasters "eclipsed even our direst worst-case scenarios."

In more recent weeks, I have been encouraged by the Red Cross's public vow to address some of the criticisms by seeking greater diversity within its ranks and establishing partnerships with local groups.  I believe the coming transition at the American Red Cross offers an opportunity for Red Cross management to respond to the concerns that have been raised and that will be discussed here today. 

At this time, I now recognize my good friend from Georgia, the distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Lewis, for his opening statement. 

[The opening statement of Chairman Ramstad follows:]

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  Thank you for holding this hearing this afternoon. 

More than 2 months ago, Hurricane Katrina tore through the gulf region, causing unbelievable destruction.  Tens of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes.  The area suffered over $100 billion in property damage. 

Charitable organizations played a critical role in our country's humanitarian response to Hurricane Katrina.  Americans helped these efforts by giving well over $2.5 billion to charitable organizations for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  The American Red Cross described Hurricane Katrina as a disaster of epic proportion, in fact, nearly 20 times larger than anything we have ever faced before. 

At the peak of the emergency, the Red Cross sheltered close to 150,000 people in more than 500 facilities.  In response to the hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, the Red Cross has provided 3.42 million overnight stays in more than 1,000 shelters nationwide, and given more than 1.2 million families emergency financial assistance. 

In coordination with the Southern Baptist Convention, the Red Cross has served over 50 million hot meals and snacks to hurricane survivors.  The Salvation Army and small churches, often local churches, were able to meet many of the needs of hard-to-reach communities where the American Red Cross could not. 

When Katrina first hit the region, the Salvation Army was able to quickly deliver food, blankets, cleaning kits, and other needed supplies to those in most need.  Today, the organization has served more than 12 million hot meals, sandwiches and snacks to survivors and first responders. 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, I want to welcome all of the witnesses coming before the Subcommittee today.  Your organizations' response to Hurricane Katrina was outstanding and unlike anything seen in our country before.  There are always lessons to be learned to improve our disaster response system for the future; I share your interest in learning from past experience. 

In conclusion, America's charitable response to Hurricane Katrina deserves our praise.  I want to give each of you my personal thank you for all that you did and continue to do. 

[The opening statement of Mr. Lewis follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The Chair thanks the Ranking Member. 

Now, we call the first panel comprising of our colleague from Louisiana, a Member of the Committee on Ways and Means and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security. 

I want to say before you begin, Jim, that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, your leadership, your hard work, your dedicated efforts were truly an inspiration to all of us and to all Americans.  I want to thank you for all that you did to lead us in the direction of providing the appropriate relief to people devastated by the worst natural disaster in our Nation's history.

I look forward to your testimony.  Welcome to the Subcommittee.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. JIM MCCRERY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF LOUISIANA

Mr. MCCRERY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Thank you for those kind words. 

I want to thank the full Committee of Ways and Means for being so responsive in the wake of Katrina initially, and now Rita, in moving bills through the Congress, through our Committee, through the Congress on unemployment compensation relief, on welfare relief, tax relief for individuals who are victims of Katrina; and now, we hope this week or next, another tax bill dealing with incentives to bring investment, business investment, back to the devastated areas.

I think this hearing today, though, is very important, Mr. Chairman, and I commend you for holding it in an effort to shed light on the positive things that were done--as you and Mr. Lewis both talked about, indeed there were a lot of very positive deeds performed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina--but also to question and highlight problems that were present in dealing with the aftermath of those storms. 

Today, I want to take this opportunity to shed light on some of those shortcomings as I saw them from my perspective as someone on the ground in a part of Louisiana that was not touched by Katrina.  My district was not touched at all by the storm, but we were touched by the tens of thousands of evacuees that came into my district seeking shelter. 

So, it is that experience, primarily, that I want to talk about today.  Before another Committee, I can talk about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and some other things, but today I am going to focus on the sheltering activity and who was responsible for that.

I am concerned, in particular, with the performance of the American Red Cross.  Based on my experiences on the ground from Katrina and Rita, the American Red Cross was not properly prepared to fulfill its emergency role in our national response plan.  For over 100 years, beginning with the Congressional Charter of 1905, the Federal Government has partnered with the American Red Cross to provide domestic and international disaster relief.

The current relationship is outlined in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Response Plan, where the American Red Cross is named the primary agency responsible for mass care after a disaster.  This means that the American Red Cross, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), is primarily responsible for providing emergency medical care, food and shelter to Americans in the wake of natural and man-made disasters.  After witnessing the Red Cross's struggles during Katrina and Rita, I question whether it is prudent for Congress to place such great responsibility in the hands of one organization. 

Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding of New Orleans displaced roughly 1 million people from their homes in southeast Louisiana.  Tens of thousands sought shelter in my district.  It was clear from the beginning that the Red Cross simply didn't have the sheltering capacity to meet immediate needs.  Small independent shelters began popping up by the dozens across northwest Louisiana.  At the peak, there were over 40 shelters operating in my district, and fewer than 10 of those were Red Cross shelters. 

So, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, when you read in the paper or you hear statistics like Mr. Lewis cited in his opening statement about X number of people being fed and so forth, a lot of those statistics come from the Red Cross, and they are accurate insofar as the Red Cross is concerned, but there are literally tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people being fed and sheltered that are not accounted for in those figures because the Red Cross does not know about them. 

That is the experience I had, Mr. Chairman.  Immediately after Katrina, when I was going around my district trying to make sure that evacuees from south Louisiana were taken care of, we had a number of small shelters--I say "small," some of them had 300 people in a high school gymnasium; they were not that small--but we had a number of shelters like that that popped up out of necessity. 

The large shelters in Shreveport were full, and none were opening at that time.  So, these people were coming up from south Louisiana, banging on our doors, saying, "Help."  Those communities, rightfully so, opened their doors, created a shelter, and when I or the people from those local communities tried to get the Red Cross to send them blankets or cots or food, or diapers, they were told, Sorry, we cannot help you. 

Now, I believe that the Red Cross director in my district was being honest.  He probably could not help because he either didn't have the provisions, or he didn't have the transportation for the provisions, didn't have the volunteers, but whose fault is that?  In my view, it is the fault of the American Red Cross--not my local chapter, the national Red Cross--poorly planning or just not planning at all for a disaster of this scope. 

We have known for decades that New Orleans was vulnerable to a storm of this sort, that flooding was possible, that hundreds of thousands of people would be displaced from their homes.  We have, since 9/11, I think, anticipated a similar man-made disaster that could be caused by a terrorist act.  Why were we not better prepared? 

I spoke earlier about FEMA.  I think FEMA was woefully unprepared.  The Federal Government was woefully unprepared.  Our State government was woefully unprepared.  The local governments were unprepared.  I think the Red Cross was unprepared, as clearly demonstrated. 

So, that is my testimony in a nutshell, Mr. Chairman.  I will be happy to stay and answer questions that your Committee might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. McCrery follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Well, thank you very much for your very compelling testimony.  I have just a few questions I would like to ask. 

Jim, what kind of response did you get when you brought the problems to the attention of the Red Cross Headquarters of the American Red Cross?  What kind of response did you get when you alerted them as to the problems with the shelters? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  The national organization expressed some surprise at some of the things I was telling them.  So, they were evidently unaware of what was happening on the ground in my district.  They did pledge to look into it and to try to identify where the problems arose and fix those, and that is why I am here today. 

I hope I am not being unduly tough on the Red Cross, but I think we need to talk plainly about the shortcomings of our disaster response; and if the Red Cross is going to be the Federal Government's primary responder in terms of shelter, than I think we owe it to ourselves and we owe it to the Red Cross to point out the shortcomings of that effort so that we can be better prepared next time. 

The national Red Cross evidently was not well aware of what was going on on the ground, at least in my district, and they have promised to try to rectify those problems, but the initial response was just simply, we didn't know. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  I notice from your written testimony that you asserted the national Red Cross attributed the shortcomings in your district to the local chapter.  Rather than being an issue of lack of control by the national Red Cross vis-a-vis the local chapter, you seem to indicate today it is more a lack of planning on national's part. 

Mr. MCCRERY.  That is my perception, that there was not in place an adequate plan on the part of the Red Cross to deal with sheltering this many people.  It overwhelmed them.  It overwhelmed my local chapter.  It overwhelmed the national Red Cross.  I understand that.  It was a very difficult situation. 

This country has never seen anything like it in our history, but after 9/11, I think we all knew that something like this could happen somewhere, and we should have been better prepared.  That is all I am saying, Mr. Chairman. 

I hope the Federal Government will work with the Red Cross or maybe bring in the Salvation Army or other groups to have a united effort to make sure these kinds of problems are met in the future.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  I want to ask one final question.  I touched on it in my opening statement, and you certainly have just touched on it again; that is Congress' responsibility to examine the relationship between the Federal Government and the Red Cross, which you clearly stated, so that we can avoid problems that happened in your district from happening again, from being repeated anywhere else. 

Do you have any suggestions for how we as Members of Congress can help improve the response by charitable organizations? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Mr. Chairman, I think that we ought to reexamine the congressional charter that gives the American Red Cross the responsibility for the initial sheltering and feeding and so forth of victims of national disasters.  We ought to examine that relationship, perhaps bring in other organizations, make it an umbrella organization. 

I do not know, but Congress needs to fully examine that and make sure that the plan we have in place with some NGOs is the best one to meet such a massive need in case we have this kind of disaster again. 

Let me hasten to add, Mr. Chairman, that there were lots of volunteers; I do not how many--hundreds, thousands of volunteers, and the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, the United Way and lots of organizations that did heroic jobs.  I think my local director of the Red Cross worked 22 straight days with no time off, trying to see to the needs of the shelters that they were operating in my area. 

So, I certainly want to commend those individuals who volunteered their time, and some who were paid, and went beyond their call of duty to perform these heroic acts.  They should be commended. 

I think that Congress has to, if not share the blame, at least share the responsibility, going forward, to make sure that the organization or organizations that we vest with this responsibility is better prepared next time to carry out that responsibility. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you again for your testimony and your outstanding leadership. 

The Chair now recognizes the distinguished Ranking Member for questions.

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Let me join you in thanking Jim for his leadership and his hard work during the unbelievable crisis along the Gulf Coast. 

I have one or two questions.  You have some praise and some complaints about how things were handled in your district.  Could you, just for the record--what do you consider to be the best job done and the worst job done? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Well, the best job, in my view, Mr. Lewis, was done by people who were not in the Red Cross or the Salvation Army or any other organization.  They were just ordinary people who came out of their homes and brought diapers and pillows and blankets and food, and stayed at the high school gymnasium or wherever, the civic center, in some small town and cooked for the people who were there; who gave them rides to the Social Security office to make sure they got their checks; just performed daily acts of human kindness for people they had not very much in common with. 

Believe me, people in north Louisiana don't share much culturally with people in south Louisiana.  They are Cajun, Catholics, French speaking in many cases from south Louisiana, and we are Protestant rednecks in north Louisiana; it is like two different States.  Yet these folks in north Louisiana were coming out of their homes every day and every night to take care of people that they didn't know and didn't have much in common with, except that they were human beings.  That was very inspiring to me. 

The worst thing was just the total lack of planning that was evident in this crisis.  It was insufficient. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Let me just try to see if I can find out something here.  I believe the Red Cross is going to testify, maybe later, that this was the worst level of human need in the history of the organization. 

You said earlier that the Federal Government was not prepared, that the local government, the county, the State was not prepared.  Were there any charitable organizations prepared for such a level of human need, such devastation? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Probably not. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Well, is it possible for someone to be prepared? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  I think that is a fair question, and it may not be possible to be prepared for every single contingency associated with a disaster of this scale, but, Mr. Lewis, it is my contention that we could have and should have been much better prepared to meet the contingencies of this kind of disaster than we were. 

It was not hard to imagine that the numbers of people evacuating south Louisiana, who did, would actually evacuate.  This scenario had been on the books for years, as I have said, and we should have been better prepared. 

Let me just give you an example, and maybe--and the Red Cross is going to testify, and you can ask them about this--and maybe they have some sound reason why they could do not this, but in my view they should have, from the national office, anticipated a huge need for volunteers or for bodies, for human beings, in areas north of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

They should have prepositioned people in Dallas and Shreveport and Jackson, maybe Atlanta, ready to go into whatever areas were taking those evacuees from those devastated areas; and they weren't.  My local chapter got zero help for quite a while.  I think that is inexcusable. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Well, should there be a greater burden on the national government than on some charitable organization, whether that organization be national, international or local?  Rather than talk about getting involved in a blame game, I just want to be clear here where we are going.

Mr. MCCRERY.  Well, I am merely reporting to you what happened on the ground. 

The Federal Government has already made the decision, through the Congress, to enlist the American Red Cross as the NGO that is on the front lines, supposed to meet the needs of evacuees and shelters and so forth in a disaster.  We have made that decision. 

Whether that decision needs to be reconsidered is a question for this Congress.  I am posing it today.  I do not know the answer, Mr. Lewis, but it is a question we ought to ask.  We ought to examine it thoroughly, and if there is a change necessary, we ought to make that change. 

If the Red Cross needs help, if they need other organizations, if they need the Federal Government, then we ought to examine that and get it done. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you very much. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The Chair would now recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Beauprez. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Jim, let me add my thanks to you for your leadership on this, and my sympathy to all of the people affected by these horrible storms.  Even though Colorado is a long ways from the impacted area, we took in 4,200 refugees even in far-away Colorado, about three out of four of them from your State of Louisiana; and it stressed us a little bit.  I can only imagine what it must have been like for you in your district, Jim. 

You have mentioned in considerable detail what you went through, what your local Red Cross chapter went through.  We all know that Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, were affected by Katrina; Rita took its effects on Texas as well.  Of course, the storms impacted areas even farther than that because of the refugees. 

What is your perception, Jim, of the circumstances, the struggles, the way the whole reaction was managed in other areas?  Was yours unique or was this a pattern that was far too prevalent? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  I cannot speak with any authority on whether similar problems existed in other localities, except for the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which I did tour and spoke with several public officials in the Mississippi Gulf Coast area.  There were similar complaints, Mr. Beauprez, about the Red Cross and the response to sheltering and assisting shelters on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  I am sure you have had some opportunity to talk to some other States, Florida comes to mind, that has been hit, hit, and hit again it seems.  At least it is my perception that however they manage to do it, they seem to respond pretty well.  What is the difference in Florida? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  I have spoken to some of our colleagues from Florida, who have also expressed complaints about FEMA, about the Red Cross, about other organizations in the aftermath of hurricanes in South Florida. 

If you are asking about the State's response, I think the State of Florida has enough experience that they have learned to be ready and to respond admirably on the State level. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  Well, given that experience, you have pointed out clearly that while we didn't know the when or the degree of the devastation, it should have come as a mystery to no one that something like this could happen.  After all, we have had other hurricanes, not this large, but we have had others. 

We had 9/11.  We certainly witnessed, a bit from afar, but we saw the devastation from the tsunami months before your terrible event.  So, it should have come with some, I guess, anticipation. 

You said that the question as to the prudence of one organization having the responsibility within our national response plan, that the Red Cross does, is a legitimate question. 

Well, let me ask you directly.  In your opinion, Jim, is the thing broken so badly it can't be fixed?  What is your perception right now? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  My belief is that it can be fixed, that it is possible to be better prepared.  Will it take a lot of organization and a lot of work?  Yes, I think it will.  I do think it is possible to be much better prepared to meet the needs. 

Look, we all have run campaigns, and we know, at least those of us who had tough campaigns at one time--and some of us still do--we have to organize volunteers, and we have to have them ready to get on a bus, if necessary, and go to some other town to go door to door and hand out leaflets.  That is hard work.  It is hard to have a ready set of volunteers, at a phone call to pick up and go.  I know that.  It is very difficult. 

However, that is the kind of nitty-gritty work that I think needs to be done on a national level; to have people ready at the drop of a hat to respond and be there, have bodies on the ground ready to help, ready to give some guidance.  That is all a lot of people in my district wanted. 

They wanted some people there to just direct them.  Look, I am here, I am ready to help, but tell me how to do it; what do I need to do?  There was nobody. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON.  No questions. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Mr. Linder. 

Mr. LINDER.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Jim, for all you have done on this issue and all of your colleagues.  I am sure you are still working on it on the weekends when you get home. 

Is there a competing element between FEMA and the Red Cross? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  I don't know.  There shouldn't be, but I am glad you brought that up, because one thing that was prevalent in the first, say, 5 days following the storm, is that I would finally get in touch with somebody at FEMA, and they would say, "that is the Red Cross's responsibility." 

I would get in touch with the Red Cross; they would say, "oh, no, that is FEMA's responsibility." 

I would call FEMA back, and they would say, Oh, no, I think that is the State's responsibility; call the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.  That is the National Guard. 

Everybody was doing this: "that is somebody else's responsibility." 

So, clearly in our National Response Plan, we either need to have a better plan or we need to have people better familiar with the plan so that everybody knows what his responsibility is; and we do not get this runaround of, no, that is not us, that is him, them, whoever. 

People need to know what their responsibility is and take responsibility and give answers and give direction when the time comes. 

Mr. LINDER.  Is there a reason to question whether we would have the major planner of shelter and food in a major disaster being an NGO that has a pretty huge budget and pays its executive director $500,000 a year, and is distant from the government? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  I don't know.  That is the question we need to examine. 

Congress has made that decision in the past.  We have said that in this case the American Red Cross is the appropriate organization; we are going to not only vest them with that responsibility, we are also going to provide them some assets and some assistance.  So, I think that needs to be thoroughly examined. 

We cannot ignore this.  It is going to happen again somewhere, if it is an earthquake in California, it is a Category 5 in South Florida. 

Mr. LINDER.  Or a terrorist attack.

Mr. MCCRERY.  Or a terrorist attack where the terrorists dynamite a dam or infiltrate the water system with pollutants, that causes people to have to leave in mass numbers.  Something is going to happen.  So, we owe it to ourselves and our constituents to make sure that we either take the plan that is on the books and make it work or create a new plan. 

Mr. LINDER.  If we anticipated a disaster, which we saw coming for several days, and were unprepared for that, how could they prepare for a nuclear accident that we didn't have any idea was coming? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Yes.  Well, certainly something like that--where a nuclear device explodes that we do not have any notice of, the problems are going to be different associated with that, but some of them could be similar.  You could have people within a certain radius of the explosion ordered to get out quickly and to evacuate, to go somewhere else, and you could have the same kinds of problems. 

Certainly every situation would be different, but some of them would be the same, and we need to be prepared for that.

Mr. LINDER.  My recollection is that after September 11th, huge sums of money came into the Red Cross.  They made an executive decision not to spend it all on September 11th, which I believe the board subsequently overturned. 

Mr. MCCRERY.  That's right. 

Mr. LINDER.  Do you have any expectation that this is occurring in this event? 

Mr. MCCRERY.  I do not.  I just do not know, but--I think you raise a legitimate question, though, which is, should we have one organization that is generally recognized as the organization to respond to disasters, and as a consequence of that recognition, have the overwhelming majority of private sector donations going to that one organization.  I think that is a legitimate question. 

The government shares in the responsibility for identifying that one organization, I think.  So, I think that is a question we need to reexamine. 

Mr. LINDER.  Thank you. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The gentleman from California, Mr. Nunes. 

Mr. NUNES.  No questions.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Shaw. 

Mr. SHAW.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I, having experienced a lesser disaster, but a disaster, indeed, with Wilma down in Florida and having been a lifetime resident of Florida, I have seen many, many hurricanes, but I do not think I have ever seen, and I do not think one has ever hit our shores that has caused the devastation and loss of property--even though there have been some with much larger loss of life in Florida, back in the early days--as Katrina. 

Looking back on what we have learned, I think it is easy to overlook much of the good that was done, the heroic behavior, the generosity of the American people.  All of those organizations have done a good job in so many ways, but that does not mean that we should not go back. 

I appreciate your testimony as to what went wrong, and those are the things that we should be talking about.  You won't read about it in the paper unless it is something that went wrong.  Nevertheless, we should not be afraid to get in there, roll up our sleeves and talk about it. 

I would suggest--and perhaps you hit on this in your testimony, but I think FEMA should call together all of these organizations.  You talk about a "plan."  Well, the plan should be in writing and be very, very clear. 

There were many breakdowns.  The first breakdown was in individual responsibility.  That was a huge breakdown, and particularly in Louisiana.  Then there was a breakdown in the city, there was a breakdown in the governor's office in Louisiana.  

Florida was not perfect, but I think that--compared to what went on in Louisiana, that we should get an Oscar for the way our government operated at the local as well as at the State level with Jeb Bush.  I think he did a wonderful job. 

Again, I can tell you, the press in Florida talks about what went wrong.  One area that is a little bit outside of the scope of this hearing, but Mr. Linder brought up the question of FEMA, an area that is worrying me, and that is exactly what FEMA does. 

In Florida, I am sure in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, I don't care how rich you are, if you went out and bought a generator, they reimbursed you up to $800.  Luckily, most people didn't know that, or I can tell you that it would have been rampant.  Chain saws, why are we buying people chain saws?  We all are anxious to get the trees out of the road and out of our yards, but giving individuals--refunding the money for going out and buying themselves a nice new chain saw, I do not think is the responsibility of FEMA. 

Now, I know of personal individuals, if you have got medical emergencies, something that is really drastic and people cannot afford it, then I think it is proper to buy a generator to put in someone's personal home.  To just simply say, all you have got to do is buy one--one of the adjusters for FEMA, going out and looking at where the generator was and being sure that it was properly done before the adjustment, found it in a five-car garage.  Now, I can tell you, somebody with a five-car garage should not be getting a free generator. 

On the island of Palm Beach, there were several people; there is not a home on the island of Palm Beach that is worth less than $1 million.  That should not happen.  As a matter of fact, I do not think we should be buying them, period, except in drastic circumstances. 

Did you have the same experience in your area. 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Yes.  As you said, this is not the proper forum to examine FEMA's responsibilities. 

Mr. SHAW.  It is as close as this Committee will get. 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Since you asked, though--and I have already stated in a general sense that FEMA was unprepared for this--and I think the examples that you point out of people abusing FEMA abound.  That is hard to control because that is human nature, to take advantage of a situation, sometimes even in Florida.  What FEMA can do about that, short of our changing the rules, I don't know.

Mr. SHAW.  Well, I did look at what the law is; and the law allows FEMA to set the regulations as to what they are going to do, and I think we need to be a little more restrictive in the statute. 

So, I plan to ask the party of appropriate jurisdiction to look at that and tighten up on that, because otherwise, the word has gotten out now; and I can tell you, when Florida gets another hurricane, the best business you can be in is selling generators, because you are going to sell jagillions of them. 

It is wrong.  It is not the proper use of taxpayer dollars. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I yield back.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. Shaw. 

The Chair again thanks you, Chairman McCrery, for your testimony, your leadership and your great effort in this regard.  We look forward to working with you to remedy some of the problems that you point out. 

The Chair will now call the second panel for today's hearing.  If you would come forward please, take your seats.  First, Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Managing Director, Education Workforce and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO); Joseph C. Becker, Senior Vice President, Preparedness and Response, American Red Cross; Major Todd Hawks, Public Affairs Secretary and Associate National Community Relations and Development Secretary, Salvation Army of America; and John G. Davies, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Baton Rouge Area Foundation. 

Welcome to all four of you witnesses.  Thank you for being here today.  We will begin, please, with Ms. Fagnoni.

STATEMENT OF CYNTHIA M. FAGNONI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EDUCATION, WORKFORCE AND INCOME SECURITY, U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 

Ms. FAGNONI.  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee.  I am pleased to be here today to share early findings from GAO's ongoing review of charities' response to the recent Gulf Coast hurricanes. 

Charities have played a major role in responding to national disasters, including the September 11th terrorist attacks, and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  They provided food, water, shelter and other assistance to victims in devastated areas. 

Following the recent hurricanes, charities mounted the largest disaster response effort in U.S. history.  My statement today will focus on charities' progress in incorporating lessons learned following the September 11th attacks and our preliminary observations on how well charities have coordinated following the Gulf Coast hurricanes. 

The GAO reported several lessons learned from the 9/11 response that could help charities enhance their responses to future disasters.  These included making it easier for eligible survivors to get the help they need, enhancing coordination among charities and with FEMA, educating the public about charities' roles in disaster response, and planning for future events. 

We recommended that FEMA convene a working group of charities to address these lessons learned, which resulted in the creation of the Coordinated Assistance Network (CAN).  The CAN involves seven of the largest disaster response charities and is designed to improve coordination and share information electronically about aid recipients and services provided.

In response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, charities have raised more than $2.5 billion in cash donations according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.  The American Red Cross raised more than half of that total, with other organizations raising considerably smaller amounts. 

Disaster relief charities took steps to coordinate services through central operations centers, conference calls and electronic databases.  For example, in the weeks following Katrina, the Red Cross organized a national operations center with FEMA and other national charities to coordinate services on the ground. 

National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), an umbrella organization of charities organized daily conference calls with Federal officials and more than 40 charities to share information.  The CAN activated its case management databases, which enabled more than 40 participating charities to share data on their clients and the services they provided. 

The CAN also created and activated a shelter database that included information about the operating status and capacity of emergency shelters in the Gulf Coast region.  The charity representatives we interviewed reinforced the importance of these efforts, but they raised some concerns about the usefulness of these operations and systems. 

For example, charity representatives told us that the national VOAD conference calls often included too many participants and sometimes participants provided inaccurate information.  Some charity officials also told us that because the CAN databases were still under development, they were not ready for use on such a large scale.

Many volunteers had not received sufficient training on the system, and some of the technological glitches had not been resolved.  In addition, the databases required Internet access and electricity, which is not always available in disaster situations.  We also found that charities had to balance access to services with safety concerns as they responded to the hurricanes. 

The GAO teams visiting the Gulf Coast in October observed that the Red Cross didn't provide relief in certain areas due to policies intended to protect the safety of service providers and victims.  These policies included not establishing shelters in flood-risk areas or in structures that are vulnerable to strong winds, even when victims remained in these areas. 

The GAO teams in the field observed that the Salvation Army and smaller charitable organizations, often local churches, frequently met victims' needs in these locations.  Smaller charities played an important role in responding to this disaster, but some concerns were raised about their ability to provide adequate services to victims. 

Some charity representatives told us that many of the smaller organizations had never operated in a disaster and may not have completely understood the situation.  Some smaller organizations tried to establish tent cities to house evacuees, for example, but were not prepared to provide the water, sanitation and electricity these shelters required.

In addition, some of the small charities that placed dislocated children in temporary homes didn't keep sufficient records about where the children were placed.  This made it difficult for families to locate their missing children. 

In closing, the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has challenged charities' abilities to provide large-scale aid to disaster survivors.  At the same time, it has provided a critical opportunity to assess how the Nation's charities have incorporated lessons learned from responding to 9/11. 

In ongoing work, GAO will continue to examine how well charities coordinated their response to the Gulf Coast hurricanes. 

Mr. Chairman, this completes my oral statement.  I would be happy to answer any questions you or the Subcommittee Members may have.  Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Fagnoni follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you for your testimony and for making us all accountable.  Mr. Becker, please.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH C. BECKER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESPONSE AND PREPAREDNESS, AMERICAN RED CROSS

Mr. BECKER.  Mr. Chairman, my name is Joe Becker, and I head Red Cross disaster services.  I continue to lead our organization's response to Hurricane Katrina.  I am delighted to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity to share with you our work for the survivors of the storm.  The core mission of the American Red Cross is to provide relief to victims of disasters.  We are volunteer-led and our services are delivered by volunteers.  We do this through a network of 800 chapters throughout the country.  We, like others, deal with the human side of disaster.  To do that we partner with other nonprofit groups and organizations, and we partner with every level of government--local, State and Federal.  Every day we respond to victims of disaster, from as small as a family whose house burns to as big as Katrina, and we help with the same needs. 

We shelter, which is to provide a safe place for people to stay during a hurricane and in the coming days after until they have a place to go.  We feed.  We feed the people in our shelters, and we feed in the community.  We work with other nonprofits and faith-based groups in the larger disasters, who come forward to join that effort.  We provide emergency financial assistance.  We do this to provide for things like the next set of clothes for people who left home with very little.  This is usually done now in the form of a debit card.  We provide mental health counseling, and we connect families with loved ones who are missing.  So, we shelter, we feed, and we provide for immediate emergency financial needs of people. 

For many years, the bar that we had set for hurricanes was Andrew.  Then we had the four back-to-back storms last year, the sum of which was the largest Red Cross response ever. 

In every way of measuring, Katrina has dwarfed the sum of all four storms last year.  We said early on in Katrina that the response would be bigger than the Red Cross alone--that it would take many Americans to respond.  They did. 

We did run the shelters, as was described, about 1,100 in 27 States and here in the District.  We just closed our last Katrina shelter a little over a week ago.  We closed our last Wilma shelter last night.  We have fed over 50 million meals and snacks, and we are still feeding in the Gulf Coast at about 50,000 meals a day. 

We knew early on that there was a need for our financial assistance on a totally different scale.  We didn't have 73,000 families needing financial assistance, like we did last year in the sum of all four of those storms; we knew early on that we would have over 1 million families requiring that assistance.  We had to build entirely new ways to do that. 

We had very long lines.  We had a lot of busy signals at the call centers that we created for the storm, but in a matter of weeks, we gave over 1.2 million families an average of about $1,000 per family. 

Last fall's storms cost our organization about $130 million.  We project that our response to these storms will cost us over $2 billion, and we continue to raise money to pay those bills. 

About 220,000 Red Crossers have served so far.  They slept in their trucks, they slept in the shelters, and they did good work.  They volunteered because they care. 

However, there were things that we could have done better. 

After every major disaster, we conduct a top-to-bottom study with a critical eye, and our board is leading this study now.  We intend to take the lessons we learned and work to get better.

In my written testimony, I outlined some of our early areas of focus from the study.  The response was bigger than the Red Cross.  So, many organizations joined the effort, many new to the disaster work.  We have a lot to be proud of, we have a lot to be thankful for, and we still have a lot to do. 

Thank you for allowing me to share with you today.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Becker follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. Becker.  Major Hawks, please.

STATEMENT OF MAJOR TODD HAWKS, PUBLIC AFFAIRS SECRETARY AND ASSOCIATE NATIONAL COMMUNITY RELATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY, SALVATION ARMY OF AMERICA

Major HAWKS.  Mr. Chairman, the Salvation Army is a part of the Universal Christian Church.  Our mission, our fundamental purpose is to provide aid and comfort without discrimination to those in need.  Services are delivered by 3,600 uniformed officers, 132,000 soldiers and adherents, 65,000 employees, and by about 3.5 million volunteers. 

Our workers have a firsthand knowledge of their individual communities, and they are on site when a disaster strikes.  We have a decentralized infrastructure that allows us to respond to a disaster very quickly and on a large scale.  In essence, the Salvation Army operations are driven at the local level and communicated upward.  Indeed, the role of the national headquarters is to support local effort. 

Our disaster response services are a small part of our work.  Each day of the year we are serving the poor, the hungry and the homeless, and the forgotten, people's lives who are in profound crisis.  Our primary objective is to give people hope. 

The Salvation Army has been at the site of every major disaster in America for more than a century, and we have developed the following areas of expertise:  mass feeding to survivors and emergency responders, sheltering survivors while attending to their emergency needs, providing social service assistance, both immediate and long term.  Knowing that no single charitable organization is capable of providing the full range of disaster response services, the Salvation Army has entered into memorandums of understanding with both faith-based and secular organizations, including FEMA and the American Red Cross. 

Despite our sizable footprint, established role in responding to disasters, and the history of collaborating with other organizations, the Salvation Army is not mentioned in the National Response Plan.  We are concerned about that.  Since we are not mentioned in the plan, we may be precluded from having access to key local, State, and Federal officials. 

In Louisiana, for example, the Army was represented by an interagency volunteer and wasn't permitted to have a liaison officer in the State's Emergency Operation Center.  As a result, we had to obtain critical information secondhand.  In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, we were and still are focused on providing life-sustaining commodities.  Within hours after the storm had passed, we moved 72 mobile feeding units into the affected areas.  In some areas, we presented the first opportunities for survivors to obtain water and food. 

To date, the Army has deployed 178 mobile feeding units and served more than 12 million meals and snacks to survivors and first responders.  We have also distributed more than 150 cleaning kits, hygiene kits, and almost 200,000 boxes of groceries.  Because of the overwhelming need, the Army opened 225 shelters that house more than 31,000 people.  As always, the Salvation Army provides emotional and spiritual comfort to disaster survivors and emergency workers. 

At some point the nature of our services will change from the immediate life-sustaining service to long-term recovery services.  The Army employs case management to help people get their lives back to normal.  We sit down with each family and we determine the social services they need.  Some of these clients are referred by other organizations because they present particularly challenging problems and the Army is well equipped to help the most disenfranchised members of our society.  At this time we are assisting more than 269,000 people through case management. 

The Salvation Army is also involved in the reconstruction of communities.  Typically, we act in partnership with other organizations to achieve our reconstruction goals.  For example, Biloxi, the Salvation Army is building a volunteer village for reconstruction teams. 

I want to make one final point about disaster services provided by the Army.  We do not come into a community, help out for a few weeks, and then leave.  We don't make exit plans because we live in those communities.  Our presence is permanent.  If Congress is inclined to make changes in the Federal Government's disaster response protocols, then the Salvation Army has identified four items for your consideration. 

First, the Salvation Army should be explicitly mentioned in the National Response Plan as a support agency. 

Secondly, if the Federal Government is going to rely upon NGOs to deliver disaster services, then standardized training is needed, especially for new entrants in the disaster services field.  All NGOs must understand the government's emergency management systems and the language of those systems. 

Thirdly, people and corporations send unwanted items to disaster sites.  Their motivation is laudable, but the arrival of unsolicited, in kind contributions is problematic.  The Federal Government could help to channel the generosity of the American people through public education. 

Finally, any government policy that makes it more difficult for potential donors to contribute will impact our ability to deliver services.  Therefore, we ask Congress to make it as easy as possible for donors to contribute to charitable organizations. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony.  I look forward to answering your questions.

[The prepared statement of Major Hawks follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Major Hawks.  Mr. Davies, please. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN G. DAVIES, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BATON ROUGE AREA FOUNDATION

Mr. DAVIES.  My name is John Davies.  I'm the President and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a community foundation serving the capital region of Louisiana.  Because of our size and location and prior activities, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation was positioned to be significantly responsive to the challenges brought about by the two hurricanes that devastated our State. 

It is important to understand that after the storm Baton Rouge became the center of activity regarding both the displaced population from south Louisiana and the reconstruction effort.  The Foundation was in the midst of the relief effort.  As a result, our staff arrived at several conclusions about our experience, and we would like to present those to you in the hopes that they might be instructive. 

The first is that the lack of coordination among large NGOs, local charities, local, State, Federal agencies was a huge impediment to service delivery.  For the first 3 weeks there was no coherent way for relief organizations to coordinate their efforts to ensure complete service coverage and effective response. 

Second, within the independent sector, there was a yawning gap of communication between the large multinational NGOs and the local organizations.  Logically, large charities who work on the international scene know how each other works and understand each other's role in disaster relief.  Local organizations, at least in our case, were unfamiliar with disaster practices and were on a steep and costly learning curve.  There was no significant awareness among local organizations of what the national organizations were doing, and vice versa. 

The Red Cross response felt to us like it was a first time event for the Red Cross.  There was a wide range of competency and experience among Red Cross staff, and that affected the capacity of local charities and volunteers to quickly and properly plug into the Red Cross system.  Further, several professionals from different international NGOs commented that the International Red Cross protocols and practices were different from those of the national Red Cross.  This too led to confusion in the early stages of the relief. 

Fourth, there was a clear dichotomy between the two types of shelters:  The Red Cross shelters, of which there were up to five in the greater Baton Rouge area during the storm, and the non-Red Cross shelter that grew to 70 in the area.  The various designations of Red Cross shelters and non defines the lack of communication and collaboration between the 2 groups.  The Foundation focused on supporting the latter, primarily faith-based organizations in our greater community, that had very quickly responded to the human crises by opening their churches and buildings to become shelters.  In our estimation, the faith-based shelters were hugely important to our community's capacity to absorb the volume of displaced people that it did. 

Fifth, the 211 charitable resource phone call line is critical in these situations.  The Foundation was inundated by generous people from all over the country who wanted to contribute important gifts in-kind:  the use of private jets, the use of complete fleets of trucks, helicopters, offers of free hotel rooms, offers of free housing and apartments, et cetera.  For the first 2 weeks after the storm, there was no effective 211 system.  It had been overwhelmed, and it took us time, way too much time, to get it up to capacity to handle the volume of calls and to connect the resources from generous people to those in need. 

The Foundation hopes that lessons are learned from the experiences of Katrina so that we do not have to relive the scenarios in other disasters, and we are grateful to the Subcommittee on Oversight for holding the hearings so that we can gather information that may reduce the anguish, pain, and suffering of those who are affected by crises in the future.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Davies follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  I want to thank all four members of this panel for your very helpful testimony.  I would like to ask of you, Mr. Becker, and let me first say I think it is nothing short of miraculous that the Red Cross has already distributed $1.3 billion in financial assistance to Katrina evacuees.  Believe me, as a former board member of my local American Red Cross chapter in Minnesota, I appreciate all the good work that the Red Cross does, and certainly we are not here to point fingers, but to work with you in a collaborative way and the other organizations represented on the panels here today to do things better and to correct some mistakes that have been made. 

Obviously, in a disaster, an epic disaster of these proportions, nobody could totally and accurately make all contingency plans, and we understand that.  Again, we appreciate your cooperation.  We are trying to figure out how we can avoid some of the mistakes that were made, how we can cut down on waste and fraud like we are trying to do as Members of Congress every day with respect to the Federal Government. 

I know the Red Cross is under pressure in a disaster like this, under immense pressure, to get cash out to people who need it.  As I said already, you have distributed $1.3 billion in cash.  At the same time, it is discouraging to donors to read about cases where there is fraud or waste, money going to people who really are not victimized, who have minimal or little damage. 

I cited in my opening statement the experience in Hinds County, Mississippi, in Jackson, Mississippi, which was written up in The New York Times, where initially all residents of the county were receiving cash assistance.  At midcourse, I understand, the Red Cross corrected the policy or changed the policy, so that damage assessments were required before the residents of that county could receive cash. 

First of all, I understand, in a hurricane like that there are not too many insurance adjusters or others around to make those kinds of assessments, before getting cash assistance, which is usually imminently needed and desperately needed. 

How is, if at all, the Red Cross changing its policy consistent with what happened in Hinds County, Mississippi? 

Mr. BECKER.  Our policy has always been that we give financial assistance to families who have verified disaster-caused needs, major damage or destroyed homes, in essence.  Our constant challenge in the earliest days of Katrina was wanting to get that assistance in victims' hands as quickly as we could, based on what data we had.  So, initially, we had some counties that we knew were obviously totally destroyed, and then beyond that we waited--we constantly refined that data as our assessment teams were able to. 

We leaned on FEMA's data with their overhead satellite imagery, and what we did was constantly changed the zip codes that we knew everybody in those zip codes had damage, then we had other zip codes that no, I think we need a home visit here.  In a traditional disaster we go street to street, house to house with our volunteers.  In a disaster the size of Great Britain, which street do you go down first?  So, we relied on macro data in those earliest weeks, and then as our on-the-ground data assessment came back in, and we had that data, particularly in Hinds County, we were able then to refine the data and change our zip code list of who we were giving assistance to. 

We felt like we had a system that yes, if you wanted to in some ways defraud the system, we might not catch it in the earliest days, but when the data was entered we would eventually find out who you were, and we have had a large fraud team focused on how many people got assistance who double-dipped on us, went to more than one place, or how many people defrauded the system. 

I can quantify that for you at this point.  Out of the 1.2 million or so families that we gave assistance to we have identified about 4,000 families that we are now going back and working with.  So, far, we have recovered over $1 million from people who have given us the money back.  We have had wonderful cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and with local prosecutors who have lowered the dollar threshold that we would prosecute to allow us to prosecute people who defrauded the Red Cross and the people that gave us the money to give out. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  You mentioned the number of families, Mr. Becker.  Of the $1.3 billion in cash assistance that has been handed out, can you quantify how much in your judgment went to fraudulent claims?  

Mr. BECKER.  About 4,000 families, at about an average of $1,000 per family.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Four-thousand families at about $1,000 a family. 

Well, again, I thank you, Mr. Becker. 

Mr. Davies, I want to ask you a question, if I may.  You made quite an indictment in your testimony and in your remarks today.  You say that for 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina there was no coherent way for relief organizations to coordinate their efforts.  Who in your judgment is responsible for this amazing failure? 

Mr. DAVIES.  I am not sure.  The situation was so overwhelming that it would have been terribly difficult.  The frustration of this situation is that we had invited the International Rescue Committee to come to Baton Rouge, and they deployed for the first time in their history within the United States.  They normally serve overseas.  They worked in Banda Aceh.  We invited them to come to Baton Rouge precisely because they had done some point relief work in Banda Aceh and they understood the whole issue of displaced people and relocation, which we saw coming.  When they arrived within 5 days after the storm, the head of their team of 11 told us in a briefing that the greatest issue we were going to have was to coordinate all of the resources that were there to benefit the people, and we knew that then, and we still couldn't get it pulled together until 3 weeks later at a fairly large meeting in our office where, finally, the State determined to develop a central coordination center called the Family Recovery Corps, and that was intended to be the central place through which services would be provided to the displaced people.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  We all know that FEMA's inadequate response initially has been well documented.  We know also the relationship on the ground.  Do the charities key, if I may, key off FEMA, and because of FEMA's inadequate response did this affect the response of the charities on the ground? 

Mr. DAVIES.  It may have been a contributing factor.  I think the enormity of the situation, we had so many international groups who had come to Louisiana for the first time; we had obviously the Red Cross and Salvation Army, we had World Vision, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, International Rescue; we had many, many groups who had never worked in Louisiana before, didn't know our organizations, didn't know the structure of our government.  They also didn't understand--we didn't understand them and their roles. 

I think the nature of relief work at this point, at the shelter point is chaotic, but the chaos should not have been at the level it was. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  I want to ask finally Major Hawks a question.  Thank you, Mr. Davies.

Major Hawks, I was surprised to learn in the context of preparing for this hearing that the Salvation Army is not named in the National Response Plan.  It was more than a surprise, I was shocked.  Therefore, the Salvation Army was excluded from bodies in which it could have helped coordinate the response to Katrina.  

Has the Salvation Army applied to become a support agency in the National Response Plan, or do you see that as being desirous and consistent with your goals and your mission? 

Major HAWKS.  Yes, Mr. Chairman.  The Salvation Army has expressed an interest in being a support agency, and the reason that that is important to the Salvation Army is in part because the State as well as the county and the parishes all adopt their local emergency management plans using the Federal plan as the model.  So, if we are not listed, as you have indicated, then often we are not included.  We are included in the VOAD grouping.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Again, I want to thank you and all of the officers, members, volunteers of the Salvation Army for all the good that you did with respect to the hurricanes and for all the good you do every day in our country. 

The Chair would now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member, Mr. Lewis. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.  Mr. Chairman, I want to join you in thanking members of the panel, and thank the representatives of these organizations and groups for doing the necessary work and the good work for so many years.  Some of us really appreciate, all of us as a people, as a Nation are very grateful to you for your work, for your service.  I often think, what would it be like if we didn't have organizations like the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, local community foundations. 

Just recently in my own city in Atlanta, we had a bad apartment fire in the heart of the inner city, and it was the Red Cross that responded to help people, and I am sure the Salvation Army no doubt was involved also.  The Salvation Army in Atlanta has done great work for many years in helping with the homeless population and meeting the ongoing needs of people.  For one, I am very grateful, and I appreciate your great work. 

Ms. Fagnoni, I wish you would expand on the statement in your testimony where in areas where the American Red Cross did not provide service, the Salvation Army and smaller organizations, often local churches, were able to meet many of the charitable needs in hard-to-reach communities. 

It just sounds like everyone, everybody was just doing the best they could.  What happened, it was unbelievable, it was unreal.  So, could you just expand?  Did we learn anything?  Did the organizations, did the groups learn anything from 9/11 to plan better? 

Ms. FAGNONI.  To answer the last part of your question first, Mr. Lewis. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Was anything put in place? 

Ms. FAGNONI.  Sure.  What we see as the most direct response to some of the lessons learned that we and others identified from 9/11 was this effort to have the CAN, which is a web-based system.  It is designed to help keep track of both people and services.  One thing that happened after September 11th is that survivors had to keep telling their stories over and over again to different organizations.  With the CAN once an individual gives information, then signs a waiver, then the other charities that participate in the network and have signed a privacy waiver can access the information and know something about the individual.  This will enable organizations to identify services that have been provided to an individual, so that there are not gaps or duplication of services. 

So, that is probably the most concrete development that has occurred since 9/11.  Further, you have asked about gaps in services, and I am sure the Red Cross can explain that due to some of their policies, they did not place shelters in areas where people happened to still be.  In response, particularly in places like Mississippi, local organizations, often churches stepped in.  I think the Salvation Army will also tell you that due to their roaming approach to service delivery, it may be easier for them to move into some areas and fill in where others might not be. 

I think there is still an open question as to the overall coordination, but there is no question that people were trying to fill in where they saw a need.  The GAO has a broad set of studies going on.  Today, I am discussing the piece that deals with charities, but we are also looking overall at the National Response Plan, how effectively it has been implemented in this situation, and what changes, if any, might need to be made.  Of course, charities are a very important, but very small piece in that whole picture.  Even within the emergency support function where the Red Cross has a lead role, they share the lead with FEMA.  So, even in that situation, there is a Federal presence. 

So, yes, I think there were some lessons learned after September 11th, but clearly, there will be new lessons learned from this situation.  The fact is, with Katrina as with other disasters, it is not over.  Situations are continuing to happen and we will continue to monitor and look at how things are going and what improvements might be needed. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Mr. Chairman, I notice my time has run out.  If I could just ask Mr. Becker a question.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Sure. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Mr. Becker, could you expand on your comments about how your sister organizations, the Salvation Army, Southern Baptist, Catholic Church, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Psychological Association were critical to the success of the Red Cross mission and goal?  Sort of follow up on your statement about the significant lessons learned.  Is the partnership much more effective well in advance of a crisis? 

Mr. BECKER.  I think there is a distinction between the Red Cross and our primary role in the National Response Plan and the Red Cross as a service provider.  The role that we take in the National Response Plan has to do with how does the Federal Government resource States.  What we do in our National Response Plan role is work at FEMA's resourcing center to receive requests from States and process those to the right Federal organization to resource the State.  That is what we do as the Emergency Support Function (ESF) 6 primary agency.  That is a very different assignment than what the Red Cross does as a service provider.  What the Red Cross does as a service provider is work with the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, many partners to make sure the work gets done. 

The quarterback in a disaster is the parish or county emergency manager, and what we are doing in the earliest days of a disaster is making sure that we are coordinating on a local basis:  Where do you have a kitchen?  Where do we have a kitchen?  What church do we know of is feeding?  The worst thing we could do is set a kitchen down right next to a Salvation Army kitchen or next to a church kitchen.  So, we are trying to coordinate that, and at the county or parish level that is where that coordination happens. 

Our role as primary in ESF 6 does not mean that we are responsible for the Red Cross meeting all of the service delivery needs for meeting shelter and clothing distribution, welfare inquiry; it is the coordinating role in resourcing States and then we work in partnership with other organizations to actually deliver the service. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you very much. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Mr. Beauprez, please. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Becker, let's stay on that point for a little bit.  Communications seem to be an enormous problem.  We heard in Mr. McCrery's testimony, we have heard it from several of you, that communication was extremely difficult, maybe to be polite.  Yet, in your testimony, I don't see much discussion about how we fix that.  So, why don't you expand, if you have ideas.  You have been through what I am guessing you admit was not a stellar performance by the Red Cross as well as many other agencies.  How do we address that?  How do we get over it? 

Mr. BECKER.  To clarify the question, communication among the nonprofits in the response? 

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  Communications throughout.  I am likening this to a battle zone.  There is always going to be variables that happen in the field of battle.  It is critically important that someone take charge, someone develops the strategy, and someone passes the orders for execution throughout the ranks.  That seems like there was--it seems like, from what I understand from the testimony already today, that there was an enormous breakdown in that chain of command communication if in fact the chain of command even exists. 

Mr. BECKER.  There are several aspects to that.  I would say the first one is, what are the local relationships among all of the nonprofits that can bring value during a disaster?  Not just the large national organizations, but anybody.  The local food pantry, the local crisis center, anybody who can bring value.  When we formed the CAN, it was done by the large national disaster organizations and the United Way, but the intent was that we would offer that to a community, and it is not just the technology, it is not just entering cases so that we can all see what we have done for the Smith family.  The better benefit is that we all sit down in that community long before a disaster happens to carve out those rules a little bit more clearly. 

The way a disaster sequences, in the earliest days of a disaster, what we are focused on is the lifesaving needs, the shelter and the food.  There is a fairly small number of players, if you will, in that, the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross, and in a very large disaster such as this, the faith community would respond. 

As the disaster runs out, and people start focusing on questions like "where am I going to live" and "how am I going to recover," that is where the whole group of nonprofits comes together.  We have all been in the community long before the disaster hit, and we are going to be in the community long after the disaster is off the front page of the news.  How do we work together to do that?  If we wait until the middle of a disaster to exchange business cards with each other, we are off to a bad start. 

The value of the CAN would be that we sit down ahead of time and form those relationships.  We as a group had received funding to preposition that network in six pilot communities around the country, and we had just started to roll that out.  We received the funding in the spring.  We did it based on threats and, interestingly, New Orleans was one of those six pilot communities that we chose.  So, we were off to a little bit better of a start in the New Orleans area.  We now have CAN in over 500 communities around the country.  I think long-term it is not the technology, it is the relationships among the leaders of the nonprofits to carve those roles out and clarify those expectations in advance. 

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  I accept that, but what confuses me I guess is that this seemed to escape everyone before this disaster happened.  I accept the premise you just laid out, that progress maybe is being made, but in the time I have got remaining, I guess I will ask the same question in a slightly different manner to you than I asked to my colleague, Mr. McCrery.  Whether we want to point a finger at FEMA, local government, State government, whether we want to point a finger at the collection of NGOs, the collective assumption here is we did not do very well and a whole lot of people suffered mightily as a result. 

Thinking of the National Response Plan, is it broken so badly it cannot be fixed?  If your answer is no, we can fix it, how soon can we fix it? 

Mr. BECKER.  Our organizational view is that the National Response Plan needs to be seriously reexamined.  There are public policy issues in that as well.  At its core, with the National Response Plan, all it does is outline how the Federal Government is going to resource a State, when you really get down to it, and it is predicated on when a county has a disaster or a parish that is bigger than it can handle it will turn to the State.  When a State has something bigger than it can handle, it will turn to the National Response Plan structure for that. 

All disasters are local, though.  They are all local, and where we have to grow, when the parish or county has its disaster plan, we craft ahead of time:  this is where the Red Cross shelters are going to be, these are the other shelters that might open in the community.  That is dictated typically in a plan.  If the question is asked, what if it is bigger than that, the answer on the local level is then we turn to the State or we turn to the Feds. 

I think what we need to reexamine on a local level is, no, what if it is bigger than that, what are the local resources; bring the faith community into that planning process, bring the other nonprofits into the planning process, because the response has to be people from the community first.  So, yes, the National Response Plan needs to be reexamined, but I think that is too easy for us at the local level to say, oh, that is the problem.  Our organizations at the local level need to think about what if it is bigger than we can handle?  Before we turn to the State, who else in this community can bring value?  That needs to happen as well.

Mr. BEAUPREZ.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Dakota, Mr. Pomeroy. 

Mr. POMEROY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

In 1997, the City of Grand Forks, a city of about 50,000, suffered a catastrophic flood and the city was evacuated, and we were literally years in recovery.  That was the worst thing we ever thought could happen until Hurricane Katrina and we saw that things can get a magnitude worse.  We are still very grateful for the roles played by both the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, and our own emergency response and then recovery periods. 

I am troubled, however, by anecdotal reports that things on the ground did not go as one might have hoped or expected.  I am wondering about key lessons that have been learned as we try to address these issues. 

In talking about coordination, in Grand Forks we literally built a one-stop shop under the auspices--and this is now more than the recovery phase--under the auspices of the United Way, who had utter coordination between all nonprofits and charities and churches working on the program.  Is there some institutional, multi-organizational coordinating entity that you will be further constructing and improving in light of what you have learned? 

Mr. Becker and Major Hawks. 

Mr. BECKER.  On a Federal level, FEMA has awarded a very significant grant to the national VOAD and the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), to do the casework for the people going forward.  While that is being built, and what is typical in a disaster, each community or each county forms what generically you would call an unmet needs Committee.  You see these all over Florida from last year's storms and you are seeing these form in the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  That would be the local political leaders, the nonprofit leaders, the faith community, business leaders coming together to say how are we going to meet the longer term needs of these people.  That is where CAN was designed to work.  CAN was designed to, when these people all come together, how do they share that data?  Various leaders step forward in communities to take that convening role.  I don't think that can be dictated by a Federal grant. 

Mr. POMEROY.  That is the recovery phase, though.  I am wondering if we can't have an entity that is probably located, I don't know, in Washington or somewhere that exists between disasters and has very well-established, multi-participants, and so we have a coordinating capacity preestablished for something like this.  I think quite clearly there was coordination on the ground during the relief phase of this organization but did not meet what we I think expect and hope for.  I am wondering if you are building something that will make--that will leave us institutionally improved going forward. 

Mr. BECKER.  I would agree that that would be one of the key learnings going forward, not so much for the recovery phase, which is what the learning from 9/11 was, how do you deal with the people in the recovery phase; but in the emergency response phase, those earliest weeks, we presumed that coordination happens at the local level, because the key players, the county emergency manager, I would agree we need that Federal level as well. 

Mr. POMEROY.  Major, do you have insights on that? 

Major HAWKS.  I think the model that is in place nationally, statewide as well as locally, relates to the VOAD structure, where all of us as nonprofit organizations are a part of that group.  There is a national group, there is a State group, there are county groups, there are local groups, and I am thinking that those are the groups that need to be strengthened now and they need to continue to communicate right on up to the time of the disaster and throughout the disaster. 

Now, there are a number of unmet needs groups that have come from the Katrina efforts, and they all have different names.  Depending on the communities they have all been given different names.  The Salvation Army, the American Red Cross and other organizations, faith-based organizations, are all plugged into those Committees across the coast and involved in the recovery efforts. 

Mr. POMEROY.  I had a Red Cross--I had a volunteer scheduled to go down there and work, work with the Red Cross, and I left my personal cell phone number to call if she had any problems.  She didn't call from down there, but she called literally before she had gotten to her apartment or house back in Fargo to tell me of her concern relative to lack of oversight management and lack of fund-tracking as the client assistance cards were dispersed, and this has come up in some of the questions raised here, but I literally had a constituent call and tell me that there would be lines in front of the table and one individual claiming on behalf of a family in one line and, two lines down, there was another individual claiming on behalf of the same family, and this North Dakota volunteer said, well, there is not much we can do about that. 

Was sufficient information captured at the time of disbursements, so that the FBI investigation in duplication of benefits inappropriately can now have a chance to work? 

Mr. BECKER.  Where we had power and infrastructure, that data was captured.  Where we didn't have infrastructure and we were handing out intake forms and entering the data in a remote location, there was a period of time before that data got put in.  That was the comment that I made earlier where you might be able to in essence double-dip on us, but we would know who you were eventually.  There is a team, independent of my team, that has been working on that since then, and that is what we did quantify to be about 4,000 families that stood in line at one table and then went to another table or, in some cases, stood in line in a community and then went to another community. 

Mr. POMEROY.  This individual was in Baton Rouge.  I think you had power throughout there, right? 

Mr. BECKER.  In Baton Rouge we did, but to also get the assistance out more quickly, we had a lot of organizations and places that we turned into intake centers and, actually, in Baton Rouge was the centralized data processing facility.  What we were balancing there was the speed of getting the assistance to people and the data, and if we had to err we were going to err on the side of getting the assistance in people's hands, feeling like if we had to we would come back and knock on their door later to talk about the fact that they had gotten two checks from the Red Cross.  The 4,000 number might grow, but it is about three-tenths of 1 percent fraud, out of 1.2 million cases.  That is how many we have so far.  It might go up a little bit more, but anecdotally, that was keeping me up at night, and it was organizationally for us a risk that we took, but we agreed to err on the side of speed.  This is the immediate emergency assistance before FEMA can get you your big check, or this is just to get you that next set of clothes or what you immediately need.  Getting it 5 weeks later, 10 weeks later doesn't help, and our emphasis was on speed at that point and mitigating as best we could the risk along the way.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The Chair now recognizes the distinguished Chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security and thanks him again for participating again in today's hearing. 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  I will be brief. 

Mr. Becker I think hit the nail on the head when he said, this is not so much a failure of individuals, it is a failure of lack of appropriate planning, lack of adequate planning.  For example, given the situation in the Baton Rouge area, which is very similar to ours in my congressional district where the Red Cross simply was not prepared or able to take care of all of the evacuees who were flooding into our areas.  So, we called on the local Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) directors to call all their friends and their acquaintances, not just churches.  You keep using the faith-based.  Well, yes, a lot of the churches help, but a lot of these people were just called on the phone by the OEP director to say, help.  What do you have that you can bring me?  Well, I have a generator or I have this or that.  Those were people responding.  The problem was, there was not any planning for that, at least that I could identify.  Maybe there was on paper somewhere, but the OEP director didn't seem to know it and the Red Cross didn't know it, and FEMA sure didn't know it. 

So, I think that is right.  We have to--and whatever organizations choose to participate, we have to get a comprehensive plan to prepare us for these kinds of contingencies in some kind of mass disaster. 

For example, I think Red Cross, Salvation Army, United Way, the major charitable organizations in every community, every community has some vestige of one or more of those in their communities, in their counties or their parishes; why not get with the OEP director in each parish and some representative of the charitable organizations and plan ahead of time.  This is the first shelter to open in my parish at the local civic center, and it can have up to 500 people here.  If that is not enough, then we will have spot B as a shelter that can handle 50 people.  If that is not enough, we are going to have to send them north to the next parish, or all the way to Shreveport to the Red Cross shelter, which has a thousand or 1,200 or 1,500 people in it.  There didn't seem to be a plan in place like that and, unfortunately the Red Cross, when asked, would just say sorry, we can't help; we have our own problems.  I am sure they did, but then you would ask FEMA and FEMA--well, you couldn't even get FEMA, basically.  Communications were terrible, Mr. Chairman.  You couldn't get through to Baton Rouge.  All the lines were blocked.  Yes, they had electricity, but they had no phones because everything was so busy you couldn't get through.  It was just chaos. 

So, somebody, whether it is FEMA or the lead organization in the National Response Plan, somebody I think has to sit down with these OEP directors who are by and large volunteers themselves; they are not paid, they have another job, so they just volunteer in their parish or their community, their county to do that.  Somebody has to take them to lunch, spend a buck, have the FEMA spend enough to buy this poor guy a lunch and go over with him just basic stuff.  If we have a disaster, this is what we got to do.  I don't know.  There has to be a better way, because people simply were not aware of the plan if there was a plan, and the shelters just popped up, thank goodness. 

Finally, I got tired of trying to get the Red Cross to help and trying to get FEMA to help, Mr. Chairman, and I and my staff said we are going to do this ourselves.  We went community by community, enlisting the sheriffs and the mayors and the OEP directors and said, we are going to handle this.  We are just going to get the food, get the--we don't have any cots, we can't find any cots, but we will get mattresses and sheets and pillows and clothes, and we did.  We just handled it.  There should have been a better plan in place. 

So, thank you for your comments, all of you.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. McCrery.  The Ranking Member has just one brief follow-up question of this panel. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.  I want to ask Major Hawks, your primary mission in America is a better place because of it, is to give people hope where all may seem lost.  Now, the Red Cross has been criticized some here today.  Do you have any positive comments you would like to make?  I know you have done great work in Atlanta.  We have about 40,000 people in the metropolitan Atlanta area from the affected States.  What are you doing now to help people that are coming? 

Major HAWKS.  You mean with the evacuees across the country? 

Mr. LEWIS.  Right.  In places like Atlanta or Houston or Dallas or some other place? 

Major HAWKS.  Right now we are actually in the response and the recovery mode.  I have never been in a disaster before where we spend 4 months in a response mode, where we have our roving canteen all across the Gulf Coast and at the same time in other communities we are doing case management with evacuees trying to get people back into homes and back into places with some semblance of normalcy. 

So, in over 30 States, the Salvation Army is working with the evacuees from around the country to try to get them back into their homes, and, at the same time, in the affected areas we are still working in the response phase. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Do you consider yourself different from the Red Cross? 

Major HAWKS.  Well, initially, in the response phase we emphasize providing food.  Our roving canteens that I mentioned, the 72 canteens that were initially staged to come in, they were staged in adjacent States, they were staged in the northern parts of the Gulf States, and then there were almost 200 more or 200 total brought into the area.  That is what we do really well during the time of response.  Those canteens can provide up to 5,000 meals per unit, and we have memorandum of understandings with the Southern Baptists and other organizations that will just, really just elevate our ability to prepare food, but it goes beyond that.  As the disaster moves forward, so do our services. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, sir.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. Lewis.  The Chair would again thank all four members on this panel for your testimony.  I want to thank you for all of the food that your organizations provided with respect to these epic disasters Rita and Katrina.  Finally, the Chair would thank you for agreeing to work with us in a collaborative way to address the shortcomings.  Again, thank you. 

Now, we call the third panel for today's hearing.  Marcie Roth, Executive Director of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association; Yavonka Archaga, Executive Director, Resources For Independent Living (RIL); Daniel Borochoff, President of the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP); and John G. Wyatt, City Marshal and Homeland Security Director for Bossier City, Louisiana. 

We can go as we traditionally do from your right to left, the Chair's left to right, so we will begin with you, Mr. Borochoff, please. 

STATEMENT OF DANIEL BOROCHOFF, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHILANTHROPY

Mr. BOROCHOFF.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, thank you to the Committee for inviting me here.  I also was invited to testify after 9/11, and there are a lot of lessons that fortunately the charities have learned from all of this. 

I am Daniel Borochoff with the AIP and Charitywatch.org, and we are a charity watchdog group.  Since 1993 we have been America's most independent watchdog of accountability, financial governance, and promotional practices of charities.  Our letter grade ratings, A-plus to F, of nonprofit organizations financial performance are published in the Charity Rating Guide & Watchdog Report and are utilized by thousands of conscientious donors across the Nation. 

Americans responded quickly and generously with over $2.5 billion of charitable aid for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  The AIP is pleased to report that the Red Cross has improved its fund-raising performance in the aftermath of the recent hurricanes.  Though it does need to be clear about its financial position, it has taken to heart the many important lessons after 9/11. 

The Red Cross continues to be a financially efficient organization.  It receives an A-minus grade from the AIP.  It is able to spend 90 percent of its total expenses on programs and has a cost of $22 to raise $100.  It is going to be a lot less for the current fiscal year period because of all of the hundreds of millions they have raised in this disaster.  The Red Cross, unlike 9/11, has honored donor intentions by not trying to raise money for one disaster and then using it for another disaster or program.  Certainly, in this case, with the magnitude of the disaster, they cannot be accused of raising too much money, because even $1 billion, when you divide it by a million families, it is only $1,000 per family, so it is not a 9/11 situation at all. 

We actually feel that the Red Cross may have gone overboard when it declared that it would not use money given for one disaster, to another disaster, for example to help Rita victims with Katrina funds.  Being in this case that we have so many overlapping victims, and that the areas were devastated within weeks of each other, and is the same type of disaster, I don't feel that the American public would mind if the larger amount of money given for Katrina, since that got more coverage and that was focused in New Orleans, if some of that money was made available to Rita.  I think the Red Cross is putting themselves in a difficult situation there, and it would be a shame if the Red Cross does not have the funding to treat similar victims equally. 

The Red Cross did improve its accountability by announcing September 9, only a few weeks after Katrina hit, its $2.2 billion goal for providing emergency aid.  They were producing daily statistics on how many people they were helping, how many meals they served.  It would be more helpful if they were actually giving cumulative totals, if they would give you how much they were helping right at that time, so that people would have an idea of how many people currently needed help, and also if they would say how much money they were spending, not just the total number of meals or shelter stays. 

We talked about the CAN, and AIP is greatly disappointed that the charities were not able to get it together to implement a shared database.  This is something after 9/11 that I had written about.  I emphasized that we have to have this if we have another major disaster, and here we are 4 years later and we still don't have it.  It wasn't functional.  It is so important, because the information needs to be shared among the charities to prevent double-dipping and allow for a more equitable distribution of aid. 

Based on our inquiries at the AIP, some unnamed charities are not agreeing to sign on to the planned database.  The AIP believes that CAN needs to disclose which charities are unwilling or unable to participate so that pressure from watchdogs and donors can help gain their participation.  This is something important. 

Another concern that we have is that the Red Cross is the ultimate brand for charities; it is the Coca-Cola of charities.  On September 23, they were able to raise 75 percent of all the money raised.  This fell back to 65 percent come October 6.  The Salvation Army had only raised about 18 percent of the total at $295 million.  When we have a major scale disaster, everybody should not just automatically give money to the Red Cross.  One of the beautiful things about our sector is we have many different groups that can help in many different ways, particularly the local community groups that were able to get to places and help particular groups, the minorities, the Vietnamese and so forth, that were not able to receive aid, and we think that the Red Cross should reimburse some of these community groups that have incurred costs to help people the Red Cross couldn't get to.  So, if we have another disaster and we need community groups to help people, they are going to know there is a chance they are going to get some of that money back and they will be more willing to put out money to help these people. 

I have concerns about the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund that our former Presidents have put together.  They are probably the third largest fund-raiser.  They have raised about $110 million.  They have been very quick at raising money, but slow in deciding what to do with it.  Not until December 7, over 3 months after Katrina, did it apply for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and announce how it will distribute the bulk of the funds.  They are going to give $40 million to the States.  It is not clear exactly how the States, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, are going to spend it; $30 million to colleges and then $20 million to faith-based partnerships.  It is fine if they want to raise money for faith-based groups, but they need to tell the public so the public knows that is what it is for, because not everybody wants to give to faith-based groups. 

Also, they haven't announced, since December 7th, who is going to be on their full governing board.  This is something that donors need to know before they make a contribution.  They need to know who is going to be on the board.  It is a shame that they wouldn't tell the public that. 

The Red Cross, even outside of a disaster, uses terms to describe its Disaster Response Fund.  They use terms such as empty, running on fumes, dangerously low.  I have a problem with this because it doesn't reflect the complete financial position of the Red Cross. 

Here is a group with $2.2 billion net assets saying they have no money in their disaster fund.  It doesn't mean that they don't have any other money available to use towards a disaster.  It is not responsible for them to say they have no money for a disaster, because this implies that if there is another disaster they would not be prepared for it. 

Fortunately they do have money that is available for the next disaster.  So, what they need to do and all charities need to do is, say what their true financial position is, or how much money they have available.  It doesn't matter if it is board-designated, because the board can always undesignate it if they have to. 

So, charities should also consider whether such claims undermine our international standing as a strong and powerful nation by creating a false appearance of weakness and vulnerability on our home front.  How are the people in Iraq going to feel if our main disaster group in the United States says they don't have enough money to take care of people in an emergency? 

The Red Cross brought up earlier about the three-tenths of a percent of money lost; but the Red Cross has also lost some money through workers and volunteers stealing.  That is something that should be brought up.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  The Chair would, in fairness to the other members of the panel, remind the witness of the 5-minute time rule, which is a rule of the Subcommittee.  So, if you could wrap up. 

Mr. BOROCHOFF.  One quick thing.  I am calling for all of the charities to offer a 6-month report as the Red Cross did after the tsunami disaster.  Because of the financial reporting rules, it may not be until June 15th, 2007, before the Red Cross is required and other charities are required to publicly disclose their Katrina spending.  Also multi-agency evaluations should be produced that will help make charities and donors more aware of victims who have been neglected or received poor services so more services can be directed towards them.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Borochoff follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you for your testimony.  Ms. Roth, please.

STATEMENT OF MARCIE ROTH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SPINAL CORD INJURY ASSOCIATION

Ms. ROTH.  Good afternoon, Chairman Ramstad, Mr. Lewis, Committee Members.  Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.  My name is Marcie Roth, I am the Executive Director and CEO of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, the Nation's oldest and largest civilian organization serving the needs of people with spinal cord injuries and diseases.

In our disaster relief efforts, we have been working on behalf of all people with disabilities, estimated at 25 to 30 percent of those affected. 

On September 13th, 2001, I first became involved in addressing the urgent needs of New Yorkers with disabilities who had survived the terrorist attacks 2 days earlier.  I was shocked when I discovered how ill prepared the disaster relief agencies were.  In the past 4 years I have participated in efforts to better prepare for another emergency. 

On the morning of August 29th, I was asked to help Benilda Caixeta, who was quadriplegic.  She had been trying to evacuate from her New Orleans home for 3 days.  Even calls to 9/11 had been fruitless.  I stayed on the phone with her for most of the day trying to reassure her.  Suddenly she told me, with panic in her voice, the water is rushing in, and then we were disconnected.  I learned 5 days later that she had been found dead floating next to her wheelchair. 

I am here today to say some other difficult things.  After sharing some positive stories, I will focus on the most beloved organizations of all, the American Red Cross.  It is hard to criticize the Red Cross.  They do many good things, but they have frequently failed to meet the needs of people with disabilities while simultaneously diverting resources from organizations addressing those unmet needs. 

Not only has this hurt people with disabilities and the organizations that serve them, but it has also added an untold burden on taxpayers through costs associated with preventible secondary complications.  Sadly, the needs of people with disabilities have been overlooked by the general public and the media.

Joe Shapiro, an NPR reporter, was one of the few to report about people with disabilities.  Thanks to a very generous donation from Robert and Ita Klein, who established the Brian McCloskey Hurricane Katrina Survivors with Disabilities Fund, National Spinal Cord Injury Association is able to provide some direct assistance.  The Disability Funders Network is distributing $5,000 grants to meet unserved needs, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council stepped in to get donated medical equipment and supplies distributed when none of the relief organizations would provide funds for this. 

Several of the international wheelchair distribution organizations also stepped in.  Thanks to the Salvation Army, funds were made available to assist some hurricane survivors who had been dumped into nursing homes.  While everyone else argued about who was responsible, the Salvation Army provided funds to help survivors regain their independence. 

In contrast, many Gulf Coast residents with disabilities were excluded from Red Cross shelters and relief assistance services.  Some were separated form caregivers and service animals and then sent to nursing homes when they couldn't maintain their independence.

People with disabilities were forced to remain on buses while everyone else was invited into certain shelters.  Then they were driven for sometimes hundreds of miles before being taken in.  When disability experts showed up at shelters to offer assistance they were frequently turned away. 

One Red Cross official told me, we aren't supposed to help these people, the local health departments do that.  We cannot hardly deal with the intact people.  One woman was sent to a special needs shelter so overcrowded that she slept in her wheelchair for weeks.  Ultimately this landed her in a hospital and then a nursing home. 

After waiting all day in line residents of one Red Cross shelter were told to travel to another town to register.  Without accessible transportation though, those with mobility disabilities were unable to make the trip.  We tried to get experts into the shelters to assist people who couldn't hear announcements over loudspeakers, couldn't read signs and forms, people who needed medication, people who didn't understand how to get food and water, and people who couldn't stand in line because they had lost their wheelchair or couldn't handle the heat. 

For weeks, one man had to drive to a hospital every time he wanted to go to the bathroom because the bathroom at the shelter was not wheelchair accessible.  Most people told me that they had not received any financial assistance from the Red Cross.  A few received $360.  While thousands are in need of funds to cover basic necessities, $66 million in foreign donations were distributed by FEMA to nonprofit organizations, but these can only be used to hire staff, to train volunteers, and to provide case management. 

We can't even get to the tables where rebuilding decisions are being made by powerful housing nonprofit organizations, and this will result in discrimination, limited options and institutionalization.  For all of the planning that has gone on, it seems that the needs of people with disabilities will remain unmet when the next disaster strikes. 

However, with your help, not only can people with disabilities begin to trust that their needs will be better met in future disasters, taxpayers, generous donors, and the general public can rest assured that we are maximizing limited resources and minimizing unnecessary waste.

Thanks to you, Chairman Ramstad, the needs of people with disabilities and the hope of visionary leadership have not been lost.  I know you will invite your colleagues to join you in prioritizing the needs of hurricane survivors with disabilities as next steps are taken. 

In summary, let me recommend that offices on disability need to be established within Red Cross, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and in each of the Federal members of the Interagency Coordinating Council on Emergency Preparedness and People With Disabilities.  They must all be staffed by disability experts and given authority to act.

Congress needs to appoint an independent task force to focus on the disaster management needs of people with disabilities.  Our Office on Disability at the U.S.  Department of Health and Human Services needs more resources and more authority.  Please don't compromise the hard won civil rights of people with disabilities so easily dismissed in a time of emergency. 

It is in Benilda's memory and with great appreciation towards those who have worked tirelessly over the past 15 weeks in the Gulf States, in Washington, in cyberspace, and around the country that I close with the following proverb.  The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.  The second best time is now.  Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Roth follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you very much, Ms. Roth.  We appreciate your testimony.  Ms. Archaga.

STATEMENT OF YAVONKA ARCHAGA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, RESOURCES FOR INDEPENDENT LIVING

Ms. ARCHAGA.  Chairman Ramstad, Ranking Member Lewis, and Representative McCrery and all other Members present, thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify here today on this vital issue. 

Resources for Independent Living is the center that I represent.  I am the Executive Director.  This center has been in operation for over 15 years.  We provide an array of services to individuals with disabilities. 

Those services include the four core services:  Information referral, advocacy, peer support and independent living skills training.  In addition RIL is one of the largest personal care attendant services organizations in the southeast region of Louisiana.

I will discuss the services we provide outside of our normal scope of operation due to the catastrophe and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  It became so apparent to us days after landfall that our center's services were transformed by the overwhelming unmet needs identified by individuals with disabilities.  Although the shelters provided housing and food for individuals with disabilities, we had to step in and fill in the gaps. 

RIL delivered durable medical equipment and transported consumers to sites where they could receive other social services such as food stamps, Social Security disbursements, unemployment information and benefits.  In addition we also provided clothing, adaptive accessible equipment, food packages, et cetera, to consumers within the shelter. 

Our center identified the immediate needs of the consumers and we responded.  Our jobs were made more challenging, gentlemen, by the lack of accessibility in the shelter.  It is disconcerting that decades after Section 504 was passed, access to shelters, which in many cases are operated by organizations that are recipients of Federal funding, remains at best problematic.

Accessibility is not only defined in the ability to physically get into a building, but also by the ability to meet the basic living needs of persons with limited mobility in preparation for people with disabilities in the event of a disaster. 

According to the National Council on Disability, of the 484,000 residents in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, 23 percent of those individuals were people with disabilities.  Charities such as the Red Cross need to find a way to obtain expertise about the needs of persons with disabilities and must develop and implement disaster response plans specific to addressing the needs of the disabled community.

In order to respond in a way that meets the needs of persons with disabilities, the Red Cross needs to rethink its operating principles.  Increasingly the disabled community operates based on an independent living philosophy that promotes maximizing independence and maximizing an individual's control over their own lives and support networks in settings that are as close to fully integrated as possible.

Furthermore, the Red Cross and other charities needs to embrace this element of independent living philosophy.  Many persons with disability have pets and working dogs, caregivers and assistive technology.  Charities must develop procedures to provide reasonable accommodations and work with the disability community to ensure that volunteers are well versed in these policies. 

Problems in service gaps encountered by people with disabilities in shelters operated by charities, including the Red Cross: 

The Red Cross shelters were not equipped with interpreters.  They were not equipped with materials in alternative formats.  They did not have durable medical equipment and accessible communication equipment and specifics on dietary needs of consumers. 

Consumers were isolated and not offered services specific to their needs.  Staff and volunteers did not have the skills, training and knowledge to work with the disabled community.  The staff and/or volunteers did not perform basic needs assessments to determine the types of disabilities individuals had to determine if the consumers had adequate medication on hand or to determine if consumers were on a restricted diet. 

Individuals were often denied entry into shelters if they had a service animal or significant adaptive equipment or were separated from their families and caregivers in the process of obtaining shelter and placed into institutions or recommended to go to institution. 

Problems that my organizations experienced: 

Representative McCrery, I understand what you were going through because I was on the ground as well.  It was very, very difficult, gentlemen, for us to get in, and then also to respond with short notice.  Planning is very vital, and we need to be at the table with everyone, and we need to know, because the second wave that is coming, gentlemen, is the next hurricane season.  We have to be prepared.  We have to be ready.  All of us have to be on the same page. 

Referrals of consumers by FEMA to our organization: 

It is interesting that our organization was a referral base for FEMA, and we took the calls for individuals with disabilities.  We had a loss of power.  Our office was hit from the hurricane as well, but we had to do what we had to do to respond to the community.  We don't have the resources that an organization like the Salvation Army or the Red Cross may have, but we did the best that we could do in light of what was needed. 

In conclusion, we know that the Red Cross and other charities are operated with the best intentions who want to do the right thing.  However, substantial reform is needed in the way that these agencies deliver their services and operate their shelters to ensure that persons with disabilities already caught up in the tragic circumstances of a natural disaster, such as a Hurricane Katrina, don't have the tragedy compounded by avoidable human error in the aftermath. 

Persons with disabilities make up nearly one-fifth of the Nation's population, and charities need to be responsive to the needs of those who they are charged to serve, beginning with the compliance of Section 504.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Archaga follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Ms. Archaga.  Mr. Wyatt, please.

STATEMENT OF JOHNNY G. WYATT, CITY MARSHAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY DIRECTOR, BOSSIER CITY, LOUISIANA

Mr. WYATT.  I am Johnny Wyatt, Bossier City Marshal.  I have been marshal for 15 years.  I have been Homeland Security Director 6 months.  Of that 6 months, half of it has been under fire. 

I would like to speak to you from my heart.  I feel very fortunate to sit at this table with great colleagues.  I have heard a lot of the testimony through the whole Committee today.  There are some things that I would like to tell you up front I did wrong. 

Everybody kept talking about what went right.  Well, it didn't go right all the time.  I ran a shelter that had 270,000 square feet.  The largest contingency at night I had was a little over 1,400.  I don't know how many thousands went through the shelter. 

My biggest problem is in preparing to come here and doing interviews with the Red Cross, OEP, the mayor's staff and everybody that was involved in our shelter.  Some things came to light that I would like to share with you. 

One, I was pretty shocked to believe that the Red Cross informed me that the reason it took them 7 days to start feeding the people at Centurytel was they were allowing the faith-based community to do what they could.

When I asked the question, are you telling me the idea of Red Cross is to let all of the charitable people do the best they can and when we exhaust that then you step forward, it was devastating to me, which meant when Red Cross closed their last shelter I still have people in hotel rooms, I still have all of the people who came forward and helped us at the beginning, who have depleted their funds now. 

Now, according to statistics, those shelters are closed and those needs are not met.  I was shocked to know when they told me, oh, we could have started feeding them the first day.  Really?  No one was there.  We called on the churches, who fed them for 7 days.  We got cots from Red Cross only to find out that General Motors bought them. 

The point I am trying to make is we ran into some logistical problems running the shelter.  I had never run a shelter.  I can tell you when I took over the shelter I thought it was the worst assignment I could ever have had.  Ten days later, I would have paid anything to be the shelter manager.  It was unbelievably a great lesson in humility and gratification. 

There were some fallacies.  I saw them, like you talked about.  I had a blind man's dog taken away from him.  I stopped that.  Broke every Federal rule there ever was.  Okay.  The man finally gave up the dog because the dog was as scared as he was in a room with 500 people. 

Okay.  The Gideons weren't allowed to bring Bibles in.  I stopped that.  They came in. 

They did not like the idea of us having Catholic services.  We did; we had mass; we had a Protestant service; we had Alcoholics Anonymous (AA); we had Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings.  We did what that community needed.  We had 1,400 of our neighbors from the south, scared, hungry and lonely.  That is what we had. 

It was real hard working with these people when you were doing everything you could 24/7, and then to find out after the fact that things broke down.  Now, the truth of the matter is, Congressman McCrery--and I know that the Congressman wouldn't want me just bragging on him--but in our area in the northwest corner, all of the leaders worked very well together through OEP.  We rewrote the book.  The book had not be revisited since 1998.  We threw it away.  We started fresh. 

The only person we could get to, to get communications statewide for us was Congressman McCrery's office.  If it had not been for him we would have really been in trouble.  Some of the things that bother us, as they were talking about here, is when you have a national organization, such as the Red Cross or anyone else, you have got to be able to be flexible enough to adapt to the people's needs, such as when the Philadelphia House was stopped from coming in to help the HIV patients.  That is insane. 

Those type of things we corrected as we found them, but the problem is, when you come back and say we had a full triage at our place, we had doctors on scene, we could have all kind of medical help.  They told me, oh, we could have provided it too.  I said, why didn't you provide medical help?  Well, you did not need it.  In fact, when they called and said we have medical help available to you, I turned it down.  I said, I can't believe you turned it down.  They said, yes, you already had that provided.  I said so let me see if I understand.

I take away from all of my hospitals and all of my emergency rooms and all of my space, and I am doing it, we are handling it, and you could have stepped up and relieved some of that?  Your answer is, we need to involve the community more.  Well, the community was involved.  I will have to tell you, we made a lot of miss takes. 

I can tell you I have learned from it.  I heard a lot of questions asked today, and I am going to close very quickly with this.  We are in the process of constructing a 50-by-150 foot structure that will house 3- to 400 cots, bedding, clothing, water, food, everything necessary for 3 to 5 days, because in Bossier, we know one thing.  We are not going to get any help for 3 to 5 days.  If we don't own it, we don't get it. 

I bought the first six wheelchairs for Centurytel.  Before Centurytel closed somebody gave us 50.  I only needed 10.  So, it is a matter of organizing and putting a leader in charge.  I believe you have to come up with whoever the first person is to step up and say I am in charge, right or wrong it all goes through me, and that way everybody can coordinate those activities.  You know where to get the wheelchair.

The very blind man that was there, I had to mail him his cane 10 days later.  I put him on an airplane to his brother, but I got the stick to him for the blind man 10 days late.  Now that is crazy. 

I had an autistic child in a room with 500 people sleeping.  Do you know what that poor child's sensory overload was?  We would take her aside into a restroom where she could touch animals and feel safe.  I had a Down's Syndrome man that I couldn't place in a nursing home because the caretaking mother who was 75 and his brother, which was 4 years older, did not qualify. 

So, we finally found residents.  So, what I am saying to you is, our pleas here are not to lay blame.  Our pleas here are for you to take an action, Mr. Chairman, representing our government that says, this person is in charge, and we are all going to work with this person.  If you don't work with him, there are going to be penalties because we cannot afford to ever have a tragedy like this happen again.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wyatt follows:]

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. Wyatt.  It is obvious to the Chair that the good people of Bossier City, Louisiana, are well served by their Homeland Security Director.  Thank you for your very compelling testimony. 

I want to ask a couple of questions.  Ms. Roth, I know in working with you in other venues, I know as Co-Chair of the bipartisan Disabilities Caucus, for example, we held a hearing on some of these problems, and I know you have been involved since September 11th, since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, you have been involved in helping prepare disaster relief agencies meet the needs of people with disabilities.

I think everybody was shocked to hear some of the horror stories that happened to people with disabilities who were hurricane victims, who were evacuees.  Was the problem the lack of a plan in place for charities to meet the needs of people with disabilities, or was the plan just not followed? 

Ms. ROTH.  I think the problem is very simply lack of leadership outside of the disability community and lack of access within the disability community.  There has been a tremendous amount of planning.  The disability community has done a wonderful job of planning for the disaster-related needs of people with disabilities.

We have been excluded again and again from the general relief agencies.  We have been excluded from the opportunity to give our expertise, to give our knowledge to those folks.  That is why we are calling for offices on disability in any place we can. 

As I think you said so eloquently, if somebody steps up and says, I am in charge, everybody else darn well better start listening to them.  Disability experts can take charge.  We are happy to take charge.  We understand other people don't quite get it, but we need to be in a position to be able to step up.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Well, hopefully one of the results of today's hearing will be to include people with disabilities and your organizations, those of you who represent people with disabilities, in all of the planning for natural disasters and other emergency situations, because there must be better preparedness and delivery of services to the disabled community and you need to be part of that planning.  I hope all of the organizations, be they nongovernmental or governmental, get that message. 

I also want to ask Ms. Archaga a brief question.  Thank you as well for all that your organization does to provide for people with disabilities, to allow them to enjoy the dignity of independent living, which is so essential to all of us.  I just want to ask, one of the purposes of this hearing, as I said at the outset, was to ensure that people with disabilities and other underserved groups are not neglected when the next large disaster strikes. 

What recommendations would you make to charities to ensure better preparedness and delivery of services to the disabled?  What specific recommendations would you make? 

Ms. ARCHAGA.  That we definitely have to be at the table, at the planning, development, and most importantly implementation.  I think the crucial part is that we need to be there when the storm is named.  We need to be at the table directing where individuals should go and putting our consumers' interests at heart as well. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Prior, if I may ask both of you representatives from organizations concerning people with disabilities, had either of your organizations been consulted prior to Katrina or Rita as to emergency preparedness for people with disabilities?  For example, how essential access to these shelters is, access to the bathrooms within the shelters, and other basic questions that affect so directly people with disabilities?  Had either of your organizations been contacted or consulted? 

Ms. ROTH.  My organization has tried to force its way in wherever we can, but we very rarely have been invited.  Even now we are very rarely invited to the table, almost never invited to the table unless we sort of force our way in and say, hey, we have something we can offer you.  We would like to think that those days are coming to an end and we will be invited, welcomed to the table right from the start.

Ms. ARCHAGA.  Sir, we were not invited.  Most importantly, I would like for you guys to understand that when we went to the shelters to get in and identified ourselves we were denied access.  We had to get very creative to get in, because we knew it was vital to get in.  Once we got in and the volunteers and the staff members understood what we were doing, then we were welcomed back continuously. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Did the people at the shelter, the officials in charge, have a handle, did they have a directory of people with disabilities living in the shelter? 

Ms. ARCHAGA.  No, sir.  They really did not have much.  One of the problems that we had was that they did not capture information in the first 2 or 3 weeks.  So, when we would go back for our consumer, they weren't there and we did not know where they went.  So, that is very frustrating for us, because we know what their needs were, and we knew that we needed to get to them.  So, there was no information.  We were even told that we cannot come in.  It is confidential information.  We understand confidential information, but we only wanted to get in just to assess their needs and to meet their needs.

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Well, and this invitation goes to all four members of the panel and everybody in this country.  If there are Federal regulations, and, Mr. Wyatt, you cited and alluded to some that were just nonsensical in terms of this disaster situation and the problems you encountered.  Make us aware of them.  Submit those, if you will, so that we can address them here in the Congress. 

Mr. Wyatt.

Mr. WYATT.  One thing that was brought up earlier, and I think would be a good start is when we started registering people for Red Cross, we had no system to do so.  We took my probation department's computer system, and designed it, changed it up, and worked, but we could not use that to hand it to anybody to download.

So, we literally printed out thousands of sheets of paper and handed it to the Red Cross, who was going to have to redo that in another computer.  So, in the organizational structuring, following a person once they have hit a shelter is critical for their maintenance and supplies. 

One of the things that was fearful for us was when FEMA decided that they were going to give everybody $2,000.  When I heard that in the first meeting, I had just come off a 24-hour shift and I was not in the best of shape, and I just wanted to know who was going to buy the spray paint to put a big V on their chest for victim, because if you took 1,000 people and gave each of them $2,000 in my building it was going to be chaos. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Well, again, thank you, Mr. Wyatt.  Again, the Chair would just reiterate, we aren't here as Monday morning quarterbacks, more exactly Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, to point fingers.  We are here to make sure we identify the problems and that we all work together in a collaborative way so that when the next disaster strikes we don't have a recurrence of these problems, they don't keep resurfacing and victimizing people over and over again. 

Certainly any emergency plans or preparedness, any emergency preparedness warrants the participation of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association on behalf of people with disabilities, warrants the inclusion of RIL, your organization, Ms. Archaga, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the Disabled Veterans, on and on with the respective organizations representing people with disabilities. 

So, I hope this is the last time you are excluded from planning, because the people of America, people with disabilities in this country deserve better. 

The Chair would now recognize the distinguished Ranking Member for questions. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your very meaningful questions and statement, really. 

I guess I should have asked representatives from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, but the two of you from Louisiana, you have been there on the ground.  You have been there.  You have seen it, and I know you have unbelievable stories to tell and you have been very moving. 

How was the decision made when a group of people came in and people was placed on planes and buses?  I have heard people say, well, they said we are going someplace.  We ended up in Atlanta or Minnesota or end up in the State of Washington.  Did they put people with disabilities on planes and buses and take them out of their State?  Do you have any knowledge?  How was it done?  Did somebody in the Red Cross make that decision, or the Salvation Army?  How was it made?  Some people didn't know they were going some place until they landed, apparently. 

Mr. WYATT.  Right.  One of the biggest problems we had was we would get a call.  There would be three buses coming from Lafayette.  We would never know when they left, who was on them, what care they needed, and when they were going to arrive.  After a day or two of the frustration of having that, we would stop them when they would call and say there is a bus coming, saying stop.  Is there anyone on that bus with a cell phone?  Give them our number so we can talk to them to find out what they need in the way of care, whether they were ambulatory, did they need to go to special needs hospitals, which we had available. 

Usually though, you are absolutely right, Congressmen.  They would show up unannounced.  I got two buses brought to me by the Black Panthers, in the middle of the afternoon, that had been abandoned, two buses that the bus drivers actually ran away.  Somebody called Houston, Texas and got some Black Panthers.  They brought them to us, and they were great neighbors.  They brought them to us.  They helped us get them checked in, and they took the buses back to the police department. 

So, we got them from everywhere.  There was no coordination of that.  The best we could hope for is the OEP tried their best to coordinate through Baton Rouge.  The problem is, we worked well in a region together, but communication-wise, getting a State organization to manage us was not available. 

That is what we were needing.  We were needing somebody to step up to the leadership role and say we are going to look over FEMA.  We are going to look over Red Cross.  We are going to look over Salvation Army, and we are going to guide these things to you.  We never knew. 

So, we had to keep doctors around the clock, because we did not know what was walking in the back door, where it would have been a lot better to be able to place them on call and then call them back in 30 minutes.  You are absolutely right.  Great question. 

Ms. ARCHAGA.  Congressman Lewis, in regard to our consumers, prior to Hurricane Katrina, we went on--post the storm, we went on this scavenger hunt, looking for our consumers.  We had no idea where they were.  Once we finally made contact, and our toll free number was up and running, they made contact with us.  We were told that we were sent to Memphis, we were sent to Arkansas, we were sent to Alabama.  Why?  How?  I don't know.  We went over to the Red Cross shelter.  We were at the shelter, and they told us, okay, here is a bus.  You have to go.  Once they left the Superdome, this is the shelter that they took them to.  It was not a decision.  They had no idea where they were going. 

They had no idea they were going to be in Denver, they had no idea where they were going to be.  What we have done, speaking of our policies, is continue to serve them.  We could not stop serving them.  So, we continued to serve them in Louisiana, although they were in other States, until that transition occurred.  So, we never stopped our services. 

Ms. ROTH.  May I add?  I knew that in Chicago there was a very surprising situation in which a man with a spinal cord injury arrived at the airport in Chicago.  No plans had been made for him.  Nobody knew he was coming.  He was about to be sent to a nursing home, when folks at the Center for Independent Living in Chicago, Access Living, somebody gave them a heads up about the situation.  They stepped in.  One of the staff members came, picked up the guy.  He moved into their house, and they were able to save him from being placed in a nursing home.  There were stories like this across the country. 

Also, I want to add in response to the issues about the law, it is very important that at the same time that we are having these discussions there is a piece of pending legislation that has been introduced several times that would require 90-day notification if someone were going to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act (P.L. 101-336). 

It is really important to us to point out that this is a classic example.  If people first had to give notice of a need for accessibility, 90 days would be a horrible burden for anyone.  Making sure that all accessibility is assured is really the priority in this.  Really the Americans with Disabilities Act is our most important civil rights law that needs to be implemented and enforced. 

Mr. LEWIS.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. Lewis.  Chairman McCrery. 

Mr. MCCRERY.  Mr. Chairman, I have no questions.  I want to thank the panel for their testimony.  I would second your suggestion that the citizens of Bossier City are indeed well served by Mr. Wyatt, both in his official capacity as Marshal and in his voluntary capacity as Emergency Preparedness Director. 

Chairman RAMSTAD.  Thank you, Mr. McCrery.  Thank you to all four members of this panel for your very helpful testimony.  We look forward to working with you and your organizations.  The Chair also would like to thank the members of the audience for your interest and for being here today. 

Seeing no further business before the Subcommittee, the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:40 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Submissions for the record follow:]

American Arts Alliance, statement

National Council of Nonprofit Associations, Audrey Alvarado, statement

National Fraternal Congress of America, statement

Rotary International, Evanston, IL, Christine Neely, statement