It is not so bleak. We have the reserve manpower for the Federal Government is Great Lakes Naval Training Center where we have got access to 25,000 people to help out the first responders, but chief and commander, thank you for the ground truth here. I think we have got a long way to go in where we are going.

Mr. WILKINSON. Yes.

Mr. KIRK. Thank you very much for having me, Mr. Chairman. Mr. HORN. Thank you very much for being here.

Let me ask the commander and the chief, are there written compacts for, say, fire engines and all, so they do not have to do it after the fact, but you know what you are doing ahead of time. If there is a fire here or a police need there, how are we dealing with this in Illinois?

Mr. WILKINSON. These predetermined responses are broken into categories. One would be fire, one would be ambulance, one would be hazardous materials, water rescue. They are broken into a category. Not to say you could not draw resources from more than one category, but it is done by agreement, it is done ahead of time. Each community establishes what they feel their need for their types of responses would be, communicates to these other communities, do you agree to this and if they say yes, OK, we go with it. It is done under the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System agreement, the generalized contract that everybody agrees to, and it is really all predetermined and we can draw in a tremendous amount of resources. However, it is designed to try and not short anyone else in terms of resources. So sometimes, as your incident grows, the travel distance may increase, the time of response-you know, various things are factors, but it is pretty much all predetermined. Not to say that you cannot ask for special equipment any time that you want.

Mr. HORN. I am going to take 2 minutes of my 5 to ask one question here and then I will turn over to the ranking member.

I am interested, Dr. Diaz, and could you explain the plan for distribution of vaccines in the event of an outbreak of a communicable disease? How are we going to do it in Cook County and Chicago?

Dr. DIAZ. I can only speak for the city of Chicago specifically. This is an area that we spent a lot of time writing a plan and even operationally testing that plan in stages. We are currently in the process of a series of staged exercises testing that plan. We have looked at our health force in terms of our public health work force and we have looked at our population. Any plan that is in place for the distribution, for instance, of medications or vaccines, one has to take into account the number of people that you have to distribute to, the work force behind you and the actual mechanism of moving the materials. And we have addressed all of those issues in fairly great detail. We continue to improve upon that plan as it exists.

What I would comment on is that it is a plan-any plan is always a draft plan and one continues to refine. And so we work very closely with our Fire Department in terms of transportation issues. We have been working with our GIS Department in terms of actually mapping down to the distributionsites that we have chosen and doing mock ups of transportation to those sites and public work force distribution across those sites.

Mr. HORN. Excuse me right there. I am not quite clear, do we have doctors and pharmacists, clinics? How are we doing it?

Dr. DIAZ. I was just getting ready to address the work force itself. We know our break points in terms of based upon how many people we need to give medicine to, how many work force individuals we need and have mobilized them within our own public health work force. Additionally reaching out to other city partners that can provide infrastructure in terms of nurses or other work force. And with the Federal moneys that we are getting, we are working with other agencies like medical societies to bolster volunteers within the pharmaceutical, the physicians and nurses, that would help supplement our work force if we reached our break point in terms of needing more infrastructure and help.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. Five minutes for questioning.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. First let me express again my gratitude to this panel. I knew it would be worthwhile to come to Chicago, but after hearing the testimony, I think that is even more the case, to hear from your perspective what we need to be doing at the Federal level.

I wanted to for some months now, w, I have been urging the State of Illinois to accept the potassium iodide pills and was given a number of excuses. One was that people would become complacent and would not evacuate, which seemed to be an absolutely nonsensical notion. I give the people of Illinois a little more credit if they would take the pill and then head for the hills. And the other was that it only protects against one thing, and that is thyroid cancer, which also seems a ridiculous excuse, because that would say we should not take flu shots because it only protects against the flu. And finally I guess you said today something about a disclaimer or something that the Federal Government had.

It seems to me as the most nuclear State in the country, that an offer of free potassium iodide from the Federal Government would be one that would be snapped up immediately. And I am mystified. Could you explain, Dr. Lumpkin?

Dr. LUMPKIN. Certainly. I think that many of us have experience that everything that claims to be free is not free. The State has a commitment; it was announced on June 26 that distribution to the public will begin this month, that we will purchase that and that we have used State dollars to purchase it and include it in our pharmaceutical stockpile to be positioned at evacuation centers.

So, I think we have had a lot of discussion within the State and certainly we have had input from the congressional delegation and, based upon that, the Department of Nuclear Safety did change its policy and is now moving forward with a distribution to the public within the 10-mile radius and

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Funded by Exelon in part at least. Why not by the Federal Government?

Dr. LUMPKIN. Well, we were concerned about the attached regulations that were associated with this particular allotment from the Federal Government. And so, because we were uncomfortable with that, we did move to a separate way to fund the purchase. I think the key thing is that the KI was purchased. It is a relatively inexpensive medication and it is purchased and being distributed.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. And the change in view was why?

Dr. LUMPKIN. Well, that change was-again, the Department of Nuclear Safety is the lead agency for that. We have had some discussions; primarily it was an internal change within the Department of Nuclear Safety. I could not really testify to what their thinking was.

Dr. Schneider, is a 10-mile radius in your view sufficient? I know in your testimony you indicated more.

Dr. SCHNEIDER. As I indicated, the experience in the Chernobyl area would indicate that a 10 mile radius is perhaps too small. Childhood thyroid cancer is very uncommon, so when a case occurred, it is very likely related to the Chernobyl accident. If you look at the map around Chernobyl and look at where the cases occurred, you would readily notice that it was well beyond the 10 miles. In addition, if you looked at the distribution of the released iodine on different days, the extent of the spread is also well beyond 10 miles. So I think it is well to consider a broader distribution than 10 miles.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Could I ask one more question, Mr. Chairman, of our public health officials?

Mr. HORN. Sure.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. The issue of work force capacity, we hear in so many different contexts of the nursing shortage and just the shortage of health care professionals. Under current circumstances, not to mention were there some sort of a medical emergency on a grand scale, I would like you just to respond to how we will actually, in terms of capacity, respond to a biological, chemical or nuclear attack, in terms of our capacity in numbers and what we should do about it.

Dr. LUMPKIN. Well, in Illinois, we have had in place an emergency medical disaster plan since the early 1990's that looks at the State as a whole. This plan was developed in response to concern around the New Madrid fault, which could hit southern Illinois in a Richter 6 earthquake. That plan looks at mobilizing resources from areas outside the incident much as was discussed with the MABAS approach-medical resources, nurses and physicians. We currently have four teams that are in place on call 24 hours a day. We are expanding those, we hope, to about 16 teams within the next 12 months of physicians, nurses and paramedics who would be able to respond immediately if there is an incident in the State. These individuals are getting special training in weapons of mass destruction.

After the event occurs, the question is then how do we mobilize the resources. We are looking at issues of rapid licensure or certification of individuals who come in from other States, mobilization of hospital resources; again, the major limitation is going to be the work force and using volunteers from other States through a system of certification.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. And we now will go to James P. Reardon, the Fire Chief of Northbrook, Illinois and the President of the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System and the Vice President of the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association. He is a member of the Illinois Terrorism Task Force.

So we are glad to hear from him.

Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Are we excusing this panel?

Mr. HORN. We would like some of them, if you could, but otherwise you are free. Thank you. But if you would like to stay, fine. Mr. Reardon.

STATEMENTS OF JAMES P. REARDON, FIRE CHIEF, NORTHBROOK, IL; RAYMOND E. SEEBALD, CAPTAIN, U.S. COAST GUARD, PORT OF CHICAGO, ACCOMPANIED BY GAIL KULISH, COMMANDING OFFICER, ATLANTIC AREA STRIKE TEAM; EDWARD G. BUIKEMA, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, REGION V. FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; AND JAYETTA HECKER, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. REARDON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and say hello to some old friends that I have not seen for awhile.

Also, I would like to tell you that since September 11th, I have never in my, since 1967, experience had the opportunity to work so closely with State and Federal officials from various agencies, including some of the individuals sitting at the panel here, where not just a working relationship has developed, but also I would say a friendship and partnership.

What I am going to do today, I have two documents which I do believe you have, one is a two-page summary and the other is a backup document that I will refer to from time to time.

First, let me talk about MABAS as an introduction. In the State of Illinois, there are 40,000 firefighters approximately and 1200 fire departments. MABAS, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, has been around since the late 1960's, and it is the structure for the statewide mutual aid plan, which evolved January 2001, prior to September 11th and the World Trade Center.

A three inch thick document sits on this CD and although fire chiefs may not be able to agree in the State of Illinois on the color of a fire truck, we can all agree that this plan, it is about time we pulled it together so we can mobilize, as Mr. Chairman, your question, a tremendous amount of resources, whether it be fire trucks, ladder trucks, squad companies, EMS, paramedic transport units, hazardous materials teams-36 in the State of Illinois-technical rescue teams of which currently 23 and eventually will evolve to somewhere over 30, paramedics to assist the health system in immunization and prophylaxis type treatment for citizens, mobilization of the predeployed units that Dr. Lumpkin had referred to; and do so, so we never deplete any area any more than 20 percent of its resources.

We can respond, we will respond. Our limitations are based upon the technological equipment. With the new challenge of WMD, weapons of mass destruction, and the training and education that is needed for the various first responders.

So we do have a system in place. We will do our darndest to serve based upon the limitations.

And with that, let me talk about a few of the things that hopefully you will find of interest and Federal agencies and Congress can assist us to do a better job on the street Monday through Sunday, and heaven forbid, when the terrorist strikes again.

First, in the State of Illinois, we do not have an urban search and rescue team. There are 28 in the Nation, we are working extremely hard to develop one using existing infrastructure, our 23 technical rescue teams, to develop the needed core training requirements. Through the State of Illinois' Terrorism Task Force, Matt Bettenhausen, as well as Mike Chambliss, from the Governor's Office and Illinois Emergency Management, we have been able to receive funding to bring the technical rescue teams up to the minimum standards and we are heading toward hopefully the direction of putting in place a mobilization package that meets all of the FEMA requirements for a USAR team. Unfortunately, we have not received the support from FEMA in Washington, at least at this point in time, and there is a letter in your packet most recently received, where it does not appear they are supporting the creation of any new teams. We feel in the State of Illinois-and this would be a statewide team certainly city of Chicago warrants the need to have one in place here so we can mobilize it quickly and get to the business of extricating and rescuing people that might be subject to the collapse of a structure all the way down to natural disasters such as the earthquake threat in southern Illinois.

Training and education, three points I would like to mention from the Federal level:

First, there are training and education opportunities from many, many Federal agencies that can be applied at the local level. We appreciate that, but there is no single coordination point. What that means is that we are missing opportunities to send people to the right training. People are going to the training without the local police and fire agencies being aware that they are sent. We need a single point of coordination with all the Federal agencies and the Federal training so that it is kind of a clearinghouse.

No. 2, we do not have any regional training facilities to bring together police, fire, public works, health officials, first responders. I think a wise investment, with certain criteria from the Federal Government, to establish regional training facilities across the United States, certainly here in Illinois, using such things as like the Glenview Naval Air Station, which is currently closed, but 25 municipal agencies have pulled together in a partnership to make that a regional training center. An investment would be wise, because without the training, we cannot have seamless sustained operations.

No. 3, in none of the Federal programs is there any-so far as we are able to identify-assistance with overtime funding so we can send police and firefighters to the training that is available. Once we do that, we need to backfill, otherwise local levels of service for day-to-day emergencies are reduced.

Domestic terrorism, weapons of mass destruction equipment. A host of items: First, we believe that all the Federal funding should go through a single coordination point, preferably in Illinois. We can standardize and provide a sustained operation in that manner. No. 2, interoperability, there are several boards through the International Association of Fire Chiefs at the Federal level to standardize equipment that we would use out in the street in servicing a response to weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical. Vendors are selling products that I am calling snake