Remarks by the Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ladies Auxiliary

Release Date: 03/06/06 00:00:00

Washington, D.C.
Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ladies Auxiliary
March 6, 2006

SECRETARY CHERTOFF:   Jim, I want to thank you for that kind introduction.  It's a real honor for me to be here, particularly an honor to follow the General who I think gives a remarkably eloquent and moving presentation of the spirit of our American servicemen and women overseas defending us all over the world.

The VFW and the Ladies Auxiliary, of course, are part of our nation's most distinguished service organization, supporting our troops, our veterans, who have sacrificed so much to defend this country overseas.

And since September 11th, your assistance has become even more important.  As President Bush has made clear, and as we all know, since September 11th, we are engaged in a global war against terror.  We have to fight terror wherever it exists.  People sometimes say that charity begins at home.  But I would say that security begins overseas.  The front line of our defense against terror is in Afghanistan and Iraq and in many, many other places all over the world.  And the ramparts against terror are being manned by our service people who are taking the battle to the enemy with so much success.

And for that reason, I want to thank you personally and as Secretary of Homeland Security for your support for our men and women overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq and all over the world.

I also want to thank you for something else.  Obviously, there was a tremendous amount of suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina, which is the most devastating storm, as far as I know, in American history.  I know a number of local VFW posts were casualties of this catastrophic storm, but in spite of that hardship, this organization continued to serve your fellow citizens.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, VFW posts sheltered hundreds of Katrina victims and deployed response teams to assist with response and recovery operations.  The VFW National Home for Children in Michigan housed children and single-parent families who were Katrina victims, and the VFW also raised more than $700,000 to support Katrina survivors.

Now, of course, we continue to address the tremendous challenge of Katrina in the Gulf, a challenge that involves housing people who have been displaced, helping people get their lives back together, and helping to rebuild cities and communities all along the Gulf Coast.  And I know that the VFW and Ladies Auxiliary will continue to play a vital role in this very important process of healing our country from the terrible blows visited by Mother Nature.

But June 1 is coming, and we have to prepare for next hurricane season.  And I think this organization, particularly veterans who understand exactly how important it is to prepare and to train, both for the expected and for the unexpected, can be of tremendous assistance in getting this country prepared for what is inevitably going to be a tough season, and one particularly tough for those along the Coast.

We know that even as we speak, and even as we go into hurricane season, we're going to have people who are literally in the midst of rebuilding.  They're going to have trailers by their home sites so they can live while they work to reconstruct their homes.  They're going to be still in the process of getting building materials together, trying to rehabilitate their places of work and their houses, and they're going to be racing the clock, because when another hurricane comes, and we don't know exactly when or where, that hurricane will pose a risk particularly to those parts of reconstruction that are works in progress and not complete.

So that puts on us a special burden to incorporate the lessons we have learned from this super catastrophe, and to put ourselves in a better position to deal with both the expected and unexpected disasters coming this year.

Now, let me begin by saying we all have a role to play in this.  Of course, the federal government brings tremendous capabilities and skills to dealing with all kinds of catastrophes, whether they're tsunamis overseas or disasters here at home.  And certainly the military did a tremendous job in Katrina dealing with these enormous challenges.  But it's not only a federal responsibility.  In the first instance, in our system of government, state and local government also plays a vital role, particularly in the initial stages of response, because, after all, who knows better what needs to be done and how to go about getting it done than people who have the responsibility day in and day out for protecting our communities against all kinds of threats, whether they be threats of bad people or threats of natural hazards like fires or floods.

But even beyond levels of government, individuals and businesses have a critical role to play.  We are an interdependent society; we all depend on each other.  And therefore, we're only as strong as the weakest link.  Businesses have to take seriously their responsibilities for continuity of operations, because what depends on that continuity is not only their own business livelihood, but all of our welfare.  

The local gas station plays a very important role in helping us get back on our feet when a storm has been devastating, and if that gas tank station can't pump the fuel to get the trucks and the cars ready to go to start rebuilding the infrastructure, everybody's going to suffer.  

And even we as individuals have to make preparations to be able to sustain ourselves for 48 or even 72 hours with food, water, batteries, information, medical supplies, because the fact of the matter is, in a dynamic disaster, it may not be possible for the government and organizations that assist, like the Red Cross, to get to everybody in the first 24 hours.

So all of us have to be once again enlisted in a great public service process and crusade, which is preparing ourselves for all kinds of disasters, manmade and natural, at every life of our private life and our government.

But let me tell you about some of the things we're going to do going forward into hurricane season.  First of all, we are going to complete the process of integrating a unified incident command and a unified operational capability across the Department of Homeland Security.  

I have to say that one of the great successes of Katrina was the operation of the Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard rescued 33,000 people.  That was, I think, more than six times the total number of people that had been rescued in the year 2004.  And I think you all saw pictures -- and I had the opportunity to meet with valiant crew members in Coast Guard helicopters who dangled out of the helicopters trying to rescue people who were stranded on their roofs or in their attics by the flood.

And when they brought the helicopters down, you have light poles sticking up.  Those of you who have been on helicopters understand how dangerous it is to operate in an urban environment where there are wires strung across telephone lines and other obstacles and hazards to maneuverability.

But with that, these courageous men and women did a tremendous job helping to save their fellow citizens, and they, in fact, together with their other colleagues, saved over 40,000.

Other agencies performed terrifically, as well, and what we've got to do now is build upon this individual spirit and individual accomplishment and bring it together in a unified Department.

Another big piece of this is making sure we work much more closely and much more effectively with the Department of Defense.  That means not only planning with the military, training with the military, but also exercising with the military.

I had the opportunity in the last month or two to talk to Admiral Keating at NORTHCOM and General Clark in the 5th Army personally, to make clear to them how important it is that we get ourselves together as one government at the federal level to bring all of the instruments of national power into play in an emergency.

And I'm pleased to say to you today that we anticipate in each of our FEMA regions building planning cells that will have not only our FEMA people and our preparedness people, but military planners, so that we can be ready to bring all of these instruments into play when we have our next disaster.

We've also got to do a better job of expediting our emergency assistance to states and first responders.  FEMA distributed literally millions of gallons and millions of pounds of food in Katrina.  But the fact of the matter is we were not as quick and as nimble as we needed to be to get this aid to people who were in desperate straits.

So what we are doing as we speak is starting to build into our contracts for supplies the requirement that we get 21st century visibility to where things are, tracking, locating, communicating and redeploying.  We're also looking at catastrophic planning, because supplies are great and capabilities are great, but if you don't have a plan, they just sit around marking time.  And you all know that because you've all seen in the military that the training and the equipment don't really do the job if you don't have a plan and an exercise to deploy them.

In the last couple of months, we've assessed the preparedness of 50 states and 75 urban areas.  We've asked them to look at their own plans, and they've given themselves a range of grades from green to yellow to red.  We are now out working with these communities -- in particular, working with the Gulf communities -- to make sure that red makes it to yellow and green.  And I want to say in particular, because I'm concerned about the Gulf, I anticipate in the next 90 days we're going to be out in the Gulf very specifically asking local community leaders what we need to do to make sure their evacuation plans and their emergency plans are ready for what could be a very, very difficult hurricane season again.

Finally, I want to bring to your attention -- because I know people at the VFW are so involved with community service -- the importance of community service as an element of preparedness.  This organization provides more than 13 million hours of voluntary assistance every year.  We need to bring this culture of community service into the realm of preparedness.  We have the DHS READY campaign; we have the Citizens Corps.  These are volunteer vehicles that allow us to work with people to get them ready to prepare for what may come.

I have to ask this organization, really as a matter of civic virtue, to help us spread the message that preparedness is not only about protecting yourself and your family, but it's about protecting everybody else in the community.

The fact of the matter is there are going to be people in every community who can't prepare themselves -- the sick, the elderly, the poor.  And those are people that the government is going to have to reach out to and help with an extra measure of assistance.  But we can only do that if those who can prepare themselves take on the responsibility to do that.  If we have to go and rescue people who could have gotten out of an emergency themselves, then that is rescue time that we cannot spend looking for people who couldn't help themselves.  If we have to evacuate people who are able-bodied and have cars and could have left, then we can't use those individuals to go into hospitals to take people who couldn't get themselves out.

The fact of the matter is, we have to prioritize.  And the best way for us to prioritize against those who need help is by asking for your assistance in helping yourselves and helping those who you can help by yourselves.

We have a big challenge ahead of us.  Homeland Security covers the entire gamut of terrorism acts, earthquakes and hurricanes.  In many respects, the challenges are similar, although sometimes the settings are different.  But the basic principles remain the same:  We have a responsibility as Americans to protect ourselves.  I can tell you this Department is dedicated, job one, to protecting this country, to preventing acts of terrorism, to protecting people against such acts, and to responding to any kind of a disaster, whether it's caused by a terrorist or caused by Mother Nature.  We will continue to do that.  We ask for your partnership; we ask for your partnership if you're at different levels of government; we ask for your partnership in the businesses that you run; and we ask for your partnerships as individuals.

You've given a lot to serve your country and it's not easy to ask you to serve again, but I will ask you to serve again, because ultimately what we're serving is the America that we love and the people who are its citizens.  

I want to wish you the very best.  I want to thank you again.  I want to close by simply saying, you know, I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to go to Walter Reed and visit some of the servicemen and women, and I guess this is the first war where we've seen this among a significant number of servicewomen who have come back from the battlefield and are recuperating from some very serious wounds.  And the thing that struck me was not how they reacted to my trying to encourage them and thank them, but how much they tried to encourage me.  It is truly awesome to see young men and women who have sacrificed so much, thinking not only -- or not of themselves or of their losses or their families, but thinking about others, thinking about their fellow soldiers who are lying next to them, thinking about the welfare of the country, thinking about what we do for homeland security.

Whenever our spirits flag and we think about the challenges ahead of us, I have to say, thinking about the hours I spent with those young men and women inspires me to unflagging determination to continue to carry forward with the tremendous challenge that my Department has -- and I'm quite sure you share that spirit.

So thank you very much for what you've done, thank you very much for what you will do, and I look forward to continuing to work with you.  (Applause.)

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