The Events of September 11, 2001 have greatly exacerbated the threat to this country from terrorist attacks. Congress' willingness to provide leadership, direction and funding to support our preparedness efforts has been greatly appreciated. We on the local level are thankful for the support we have received from Congress and the Administration. Our efforts began prior to September 11th with the Nunn-Lugar legislation. The equipment training and support we have received through that program has greatly enhanced our preparedness. However, there is still a great deal of work to be done. Let me first provide some background on emergency management programs. Local emergency management directors are responsible for the development of comprehensive emergency management programs in counties, cities and special districts throughout the United States. This involves the development of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery programs for every community in the United States. Emergency Management programs at the local level are responsible for providing overall predisaster planning and mitigation programs such as training and exercising for natural and manmade disasters that potentially can affect a community. The Emergency Management profession as a career is relatively new in the United States history however, the tenets upon which the profession is based can be traced back to the Cold War days. While most local jurisdictions developed their first emergency management programs during the Cold War under the name Civil Defense or Civil Preparedness, the basic concepts of civil protection remains consistent. However, what has not remained consistent is the level of federal support to local jurisdictions to develop and sustain programs. The $3.5 billion allocated for first responders is truly needed and we applaud the efforts of Congress but there are some concerns. First and foremost is the competitive nature of the grant process that pits local first responders against each other for federal funds. This has been a problem in the past with the Department of Justice Grants and continues to cause concern. Annunciating the role of Emergency Management in the grant process could eliminate this competitiveness. Local emergency managers, as stated earlier, are responsible for the development of comprehensive, all hazard emergency management programs in their jurisdictions. This involved the development of mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery plans, including consideration of terrorist issues. Emergency management represents the linkage between first responders such as fire, police and EMS, to other parties involved in disasters, including local agencies, state and federal resources. In addition, local emergency managers are responsible for the comprehensive capabilities of their jurisdiction. It is their responsibility to ensure that all agencies are prepared equally to provide a balanced, unified response, as well as nontraditional responders such as public health, public works and human services. In addition, there is a tendency to lock funding into specific disciplines and other jurisdictional needs are ignored. Terrorism events will tax the full resources of local jurisdictions, states and the federal government. We must be prepared to respond in a comprehensive manner utilizing all resources available. The burden for response lies squarely on local jurisdictions. State and federal resources are sometimes hours or days away. The capability of the initial response is what will save lives. Rather than fund specific first responders, funding should be made available to local jurisdictions to provide for all their needs rather than pre-identified disciplines. The break down of the funding in the Homeland Security Strategy identifies how the monies will be distributed. This distribution is similar to past DOJ programs in that only 9% of the 37 billion allocated for homeland defense will go to local jurisdictions. Of the monies going to the states for pass through funding 25% will remain at the state level for whatever requirements the state determines. However the 75% passed through to local jurisdictions are predetermined, fitting into defined categories of planning, equipment, training and exercises. Amounts are predetermined for each category and the State determines priorities. Unfortunately, each jurisdiction is different with different threat levels, different levels of preparation and different resource needs. As such they should be given the same opportunity the states have in determining how the monies are utilized. We also need to include the CDC grant process in our comprehensive efforts. The Center for Disease Control process, working independently of other federal programs promotes the development of separate health and emergency management systems. Working independently will ensure multiple, uncoordinated systems and responses. We need to include public health and hospitals in comprehensive planning efforts. Creating separate systems through the grant programs will only create duplicative stove pipe systems. We also need to include Information Technology and Cyber Terrorism planning in the process, as well as incentives to develop continuity of government recovery and contingency plans. Sine the Nunn-Lugar-Dominici program of the mid 1990's local emergency management agencies have been either the direct or indirect recipients of federal resources to help build the infrastructure to deal with the Weapons of Mass Destruction threat. Local directors have done yeoman work to ensure the needs of first responders have been and are being met. They have served as referees between first responders agencies in prioritizing equipment requests and as facilitators to bring public health and hospitals into a comprehensive system. Denver's efforts in developing a functioning five county Metro Medical Response System is a prime example. The Metro Medical Response System originally funded by the United States Public Health Services as part of Nunn-Lugar, has united the Denver Metro area in a comprehensive response system. Future funding for this system is unclear. We strongly support sustaining these funds for the MMRS program. Emergency Management, by its very nature, must integrate and collaborate with all the players involved on issues of domestic preparedness. Funding is required not only to provide initial resources, but also to create an infrastructure of domestic preparedness that will be a long-term integrated component of the day-to-day operations of an emergency management system. Federal support for local emergency management programs has slowly eroded over the past fifteen years to the point where many emergency management programs have either be dissolved or incorporated into other supplemental responsibilities of another municipal agency or department. Critical to effective operation is dependable funding to support training, plans, facilities, staff, equipment and a communications net work. At best, the national systems is only adequately funded, while the local emergency management infrastructure is woefully under funded. Local emergency management programs have always been the "forgotten stepchild" of other public safety agencies in terms of funding and authority. While the various and numerous federal agencies have provided grants to traditional “first responders" such as fire/EMS/police, public health and utilities, there has not been funding directed to support local emergency management agencies. Federal funds to build, maintain or improve local emergency operations centers ended nearly ten years ago and there are little or no local funds to pay for capitol improvements to such centers. If local communities are truly expected to be the first line of protection in the new Homeland Defense system, they must be properly equipped to facilitate efficient and effective decision making in an adequate emergency operations center. Funds are needed immediately to upgrade and establish a full functional EOC in every community. While we at the local level support the enhancement of Homeland Security on a national level, we must never lose sight of the normal day-to-day emergencies and disasters that affect and can potentially devastate our communities. Attention and resources for floods, tomadoes, winter storms, wildfires and other natural and technological hazards must not be diminished at the expense of today's hot topic of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Homeland Security. We welcome a more active and direct federal-local partnership, but we need to continually emphasize that the partnership must be provided adequate resources to be effective. Homeland Security is nothing new to most local emergency managers. We have been doing many of these efforts for many years. We truly appreciate the efforts of Congress in taking the lead in preparing the nation for potential acts of terrorism. As local emergency managers, we stand ready to assist by coordinating the planning, training and resources of our jurisdictions in developing comprehensive readiness programs. We look to you for assistance in developing these programs. Recognizing the critical coordination role that local emergency managers play in developing readiness programs would be helpful in these efforts. We do not operate as single disciplines when preparing for or responding to natural disasters and we certainly should not do so within the arena of terrorism. Again, thank you for all your efforts. Please feel free to contact this office if have an questions or concerns. Mr. HORN. Thank you, Mr. Sullivan. Lieutenant Roger E. Hoffner, Arapahoe County officer of emergency management. Glad to have you. STATEMENT OF LIEUTENANT ROGER E. HOFFNER, ARAPAHOE COUNTY OFFICER OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT Mr. HOFFNER. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. I apologize I don't have a prepared presentation. I was under the understanding that my sheriff was going to be presenting this morning, so I bowed to him. What I'd like to do is-and what Dave Sullivan said, I agree to wholeheartedly. The emergency managers in the metropolitan area work very closely together, and what he said is right on track. I'd like to say a little bit about where I came from before I get to where we are and where we are going. In 1996 I became the emergency manager for the county. Before that I was a deputy for over 15 years. And up to that point the only thing I knew and was aware of is what the responsibilities were for our response on the street to those everyday calls. I had no understanding or very little about incident command. I had very little understanding about preparedness for big disasters, none of that. And when I took the emergency management position, I found out that the job was probably more massive than I ever imagined, and it's more massive than I still imagine. I have never had a job that I haven't been able to master in 6 months to a year, and I've been doing this for 61⁄2 years, and there are days I still feel lost. It's an incredible job. In 1998 I had an opportunity to go to an exercise sponsored by the Department of Energy in Las Vegas. It was then that I started learning about PPE, personal protective equipment. They talked about the Quick Masks that every capital police officer in D.C. was wearing on their belt. I took that back and decided to do a grant to try to get gas masks. Because if we look in most of our police cars, they'd be lucky if they had an old military gas mask that's a false sense of security; they have nothing. So with that money I applied for, $45,000, I got 400 gas masks. And the other thing that went with that is I tried to find out from government what was the best thing I could get for my money. And they all said, "Well, now, we could give you a list of things, but we can't tell you which one because that's a conflict of interest." Well, I found that very frustrating because I wanted to spend the best money that I could, get the most I could out of it, and be able to protect my people. So I did my own research and I bought 400 masks with the best chem/bio filter they had and distributed it to our people in Arapahoe County, but I was still 1,000 gas masks short of what I needed. When we started Mr. HORN. What do you have now? Mr. HOFFNER. Right now I have about 850 bags out there, and that's where I'm going to go to. One of the things that we started with, where we really picked up our information, is the federally funded Top-Off 2000 exercise that came to Denver with the biological release. I was involved in that from the beginning with the planning phase, up through the incident command, and with the hot wash at the end to do a critique on. A lot of people thought that was a failure. I thought it was an incredible success because what we did was we learned and we learned and we learned some more. And one of the big things we learned was that we don't have a good communication system. And we never worked that closely with the department of health, with hospitals, and we have no communications with them. We learned an awful lot from that and we are building on it. And when Aurora had the Nunn-Lugar money come down to do their exercises, one of the last ones they did about 4 months ago was almost identical to Top-Off, and the responses we had to that showed me that it's working, that people were working together, that we were talking about communications, that we were talking about our response, we were talking about mass distribution of medical aid to people. So it's working. That money was very well spent. The MMRS, the Metropolitan Medical Response System, was another grant that came down, and Aurora and Denver both were cities of that. And with Aurora getting the last one, we've had incredible response about making sure that money went to good use. We put stockpiles of supplies, Mark 1s and medical supplies for first responders to an incident. A major success, I think, for our front range. And that other money that we used is-I had an opportunity to take our county back to Emmitsburg, Maryland, to the Emergency Managers Institute for an integrated emergency management exercise in the November 2000. They were all leaders of our county, all taken care of by Federal funds. That brought us together. There were people there I didn't think they could be in the same room, and as a matter of fact, when it came down to it, they worked very well together. So I've had the opportunity to meet with that group and followup every 3 to 6 months with followup meetings, with training, with tabletops, with that kind of thing, and that has been incredible. All federally funded money. Again, a success. But then I get to the money that came down for 1999, 2000, 2001, and my image, when I think about New York City, is, sure, I see the plane going into the building, but my biggest image is seeing those cops and firemen with handkerchiefs tied around their faces and gagging and coughing and can't breathe. So what I did with that money when it came down, Arapahoe and Douglas Counties did a regional application. I got $352,000 is what was targeted for us. And I had in my mind that I wanted to put together some kind of first responder bag for these first responders, for the cops that are going to be out there first. We needed to take care of them. When September 11th happened, my money was sitting someplace between here and who knows where. So I asked the Office of Emergency Management, the State, if they would request $113,000 to be expedited so I could get those bags together as quickly as possible. And they did that. And with that 113,000, I put 805 bags together, which included a chemical/bio mask, a chem suit, goggles, three different kinds of gloves, a decontamination kit, eyewash, earplugs, disposable mask, and put it all in a canvas bag that they could carry in their car. I assigned one of those to 805 cops. Still short, but I picked the primary, most probable officers |