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Release Date: 01/28/05 00:00:00
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge
Council for Excellence in Government
Washington, DC
January 28, 2005
Thank you very much for those very generous introductory remarks. Thank you all for a very warm welcome. Leon, I can breathe a sigh of relief when you said you were at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Preparedness is apolitical. It's about as apolitical or bipartisan as you can get. There's no Republican or Democratic way to do it. We just have to do it right, regardless of our party affiliation, so I breathe a sigh of relief.
And again, thank you for your sustained commitment to this effort to engage America in the notion of accepting individual responsibility to be prepared. And if all everyone does is take responsibility themselves and for their family, we will be a far, far safer country for a lot of reasons than we have ever been before. And my friend, Pat McGinnis, we've had some great work together during the past two years and obviously, you are as passionate and as committed to making a difference as anyone we've run across in a long time. So, from our sojourns around the country, all those town meetings, we've kind of engaged the country in a question of preparedness and how they felt about the threat and what they've done to prepare themselves for disaster.
And we're proud to recognize, in a public way, your extraordinary commitment and the fact that you're going to keep pushing the preparedness agenda. It's in very good hands with your leadership. My friend, Frank Cilluffo, he was a stakeholder in the original Office of Homeland Security. It was a hearty band of folks. I think we started with 15 or 20 or 25. I can recall when the President asked me to take on this responsibility of Special Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and after I got the phone call that night, obviously, I was down in Washington the next morning talking to Andy Card.
And I said “Andy, you know, this is a new mission for the government and a new mission for the White House. We have yet to define its responsibilities. Let's talk a little bit about staff." And Andy said, “Well, initially, it's probably 20 or 25 people, but I'll be flexible.” I saw Andy the other day and I said, “You are the ultimate definition of flexibility because I have 180,000 now,” so that's really good.
Frank was there pushing hard from the get-go and helped put together the Homeland Security Advisory Council. We summoned men and women from the private sector, the public sector, the academic community and many have had a tremendous impact on the direction of our department.
And Alan McCurry with the American Red Cross has been -- had a special place in my heart since a bunch of tornadoes bounced around my Congressional district in 1985. And we took a survey of all the government agencies that responded and all the private sector response mechanisms and which one, based on the communities -- and there were multiple communities affected -- based on your experience, we'd like you to grade them.
And there were a lot of seconds and thirds, but there was only one clear winner with the Red Cross and I commend you and your organization as well for the extraordinary effort that you've undertaken and that you achieved to assist the tsunami victims as well. Your heart is an international heart. Wherever tragedy strikes, you're there to help.
And then finally, to all of you. This is really an undertaking that we're going to have to sustain for a long time and I'm grateful to know that nearly a hundred of you have signed the petition, the charter, or whatever document.
But a lot of this impetus began in our department and I must say that a lot of light is shone in my way, but I think I'd like to deflect some of it towards Susan Neely, who has been our Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. I think, on a day-to-day basis, one of the most important missions of the department is public communication, crisis communication. And whether it's a natural disaster or it's something brought by human design, how we deal with the public in a calm, reasoned way, in an informative way has a great deal to do not only with the credibility of the institutions of government responding, but the atmosphere and the environment within which people will respond. If it's calm and reassuring and reasoned, we can feel fairly comfortable that that will have a positive impact on those who you seek to help and those who you're going to help.
So, I would say that -- as I said before, there's -- we should deflect some of this light and this praise, justifiably, to the Office of Public Affairs and Susan Neely. So, I thank Susan as well. I think Pat would attest to that and if you all will join me in congratulating and thanking the four of them. Pat, again, I want to thank you for bringing us all together this morning. I'm thankful to have this opportunity to be here with so many of you who have really been our steadfast partners in our efforts -- our collective efforts, actually, to prepare our communities and families for all matters of emergencies.
There are quite a few familiar faces in the crowd. I've seen them before and that's good. That fact is a testament to the long hours I think we've logged together over the past few years to realize -- again, it's our shared goal of community preparedness throughout the country.
Most of you are familiar with our philosophy within the department. We believe that Homeland Security is far bigger and far greater and far more important than just a single cabinet agency. Homeland Security is truly a national calling. All of us have a role and a responsibility in the protection of our country and we must be both ready and willing to make security a priority.
That's why, when we laid down our key priorities for the department, they were public priorities, they were goals, aspirations and we wanted the world to know what we were seeking to achieve. Those priorities included more prepared and better prepared communities.
With your extraordinary assistance, we've done so by simultaneously building, within our department, an operational capability. And with your help around the country, we've nurtured a culture of citizen preparedness.
When I refer to the operational capacity, I'm talking about our work to improve communication and coordination among all of our partners who contribute to preparedness. Our partners on the operational side encompass a wide range from the state and local and tribal governments, to private and non profit sectors, to first responders and to all of you in this room. And together, I think we have built an impressive record of accomplishments.
With guidance and serious input from multiple stakeholders, Homeland Security recently unveiled our National Response Plan. We worked with experts and practitioners from across the country, across disciplines, and across traditional barriers to fuse and pull together, for the first time in the nation's history, a comprehensive, single, all hazards approach to managing domestic incidents.
And one of the unintended, but very positive consequences of us being pulled together by the terrorist event of 9/11 and taking on this public national mission of preparedness is that we are -- in response to a terrorist event, we are getting ourselves better prepared to respond to any kind of incident that potentially affects the lives and the way of life of citizens. We don't have to look too far back, at least in history, to take a look at four hurricanes, a winter snowfall up North here just a couple of weeks ago. Everybody remembers the signs of the buildings shaking and the bridges collapsing as a result of the earthquake out on the West Coast several years ago.
So, preparedness is a goal. We responded to it in a national way because of 9/11, but in the end, if we do it right, we'll be better prepared to deal with a whole range of emergencies much better than we've ever been prepared before. As part of our National Response Plan, we also introduced the National Incident Management System so that, in the event of a crisis, everyone understands what their role will be, everyone is working from the same playbook, and everyone will have the tools they need to be effective.
For the first time, all of the nation's emergency teams and authorities will use a common language and a common set of procedures when working individually and together. And of course, the main thrust of our operational efforts has been to provide for the men and women on the front lines during an emergency, our first responders. To date, we have awarded more than $13 billion to ensure that our first responders have the right amount of support to continue to do their jobs as well as they've been in the past and hopefully, with more training and more equipment, they'll be even better.
With a lot of people in this past week, doing the -- I think, predictable exit interviews, I had a lot of good conversations and toward the end of most of the interviews -- very thoughtful people asked me about the job, how do I like the job. I said it's -- I gave them very positive answers. Never had a bad day at the job. Some days are just better than others. That's a fact. No matter how complicated the mission is, we've always been surrounded with committed, dedicated, intelligent people fused -- whose sense of urgency and mission has been fused by a common response to 9/11. It's a great work environment and it's a very complex work environment. A lot of challenges are associated with it. Everybody cuts through that nonsense and just keeps plowing ahead and they -- toward the end, they said "Well, it must have been awfully stressful."
Well, I hate to disappoint, but I said that occasionally, there have been some anxious moments, but this is not a job where there's stress. Now, I'm going to try to give you a comparison. I'll tell you what a stressful job is. If you're a young kid roaming the mountains of Afghanistan, that's stress. Your heart starts pounding several times during that walk. And it's stressful if you're walking the streets of Baghdad or Fallujah. It's stressful if you're going to put on a couple hours worth of oxygen and climb some steps to try to save people in a burning building. It's stressful if your heart starts pounding -- if you're a cop at 3 o'clock in the morning and there's a car where it shouldn't be and you don't know whether they're inebriated, sleeping, have a weapon in it. That's stress.
I think we need to remember that about our first responders. A lot of people have a lot of stress out there and the $13 billion that we've -- the bipartisan support from the Congress that we've committed to their training and to their exercise and their enhanced professionalism is a superb investment in our country's safety.
Ironically, we're doing it because of the threat of terrorism, which is a real valid threat. But the threat of a horrific accident like the one that occurred outside of Augusta, Georgia with the toxic chemicals or the threat of a natural disaster that we see all the time -- in addition to the potential threat of terrorism, it gives us all the more reason to be better prepared and to be ready.
These monies have enabled our community officials to purchase much needed equipment and training. This includes air sampling devices in California, incident and recovery planning software in Arizona, mobile command posts in New Hampshire, urban search and rescue equipment in Ohio, chemical agent detectors in New York, bomb detection robots in Florida, and the list goes on and on. Our communities are better prepared. Now, it's our job to make sure that our citizens are equally prepared.
Just as important as having the necessary resources and training is the ability for first responders to communicate and operate effectively at the scene of a disaster, regardless of the jurisdiction or discipline. And so, we have and will continue to aggressively pursue, within our department, the establishment and implementation of interoperable communication standards and equipment. We now have the technology, in a post-incident environment -- there's actually a translator. When you get the signals in from wireless or radio, landline -- comes into a piece of equipment that gets translated and shot back out. That's post-incident. We need to work our way toward a more seamless infrastructure so that everybody's tied together pre-incident as well.
One of the clear directives the President laid out for Homeland Security has been the establishment of a National Emergency Preparedness Goal. The release of the National Preparedness Goal in March and ultimate implementation will further galvanize the work we have already done to enhance and support our emergency preparedness operators and operations. It will help emergency responders and professionals have a greater understanding of specific community preparedness targets and how to reach them. Fortunately, Homeland Security has not been alone in this endeavor. Many of you have been at the table as we've worked to develop the strategy, a strategy that will greatly bolster the ability of our states, our cities, and our neighborhoods to meet any disaster, any emergency.
Emergency preparedness has changed a great deal through the years. We now have equipment that can detect the presence of a bomb, sensors that can pick up trace amounts of biological agents, storm tracking systems that give us precious warning and preparation time. We made tremendous technological strides, yet our greatest resources, our greatest resource, our greatest asset remains unchanged. It's immutable. It must and will continue to be our citizens.
One of the pillars of our national strength and identity is the character of our citizens. Defined by perseverance, sacrifice, responsibility and compassion, that character burns no less bright today than it did more than 228 years ago, when fledgling colonists laid claim to liberty. However, prior to 9/11, there were some who believed that Americans had already seen their finest days, that heroes and patriots were found only in history books. The terrorists who believed this to be true realized quickly the depth of their mistake.
From the tragic events of 9/11 emerged our collective resolve to combat terrorism, preserve our freedoms, and secure the homeland. And in the images of firefighters rushing into burning buildings, passengers rising to take back a cockpit, people waiting for hours in lines blocks and blocks long to give blood, from the images of ordinary men and women performing extraordinary acts of heroism emerged a definitive understanding that citizens are a necessary and absolutely irreplaceable asset in this fight. Since that day, we have come a long way to motivating our citizens to do their part to prepare and ready their families and friends for any potential disaster, whether natural or man made. And in doing so, we have depended on our partners in the private sector, the academic community, and all levels of government. They have all helped us to engage and empower citizens to embrace a direct role to accept the responsibility to secure your family, your freedom, and your community.
Our efforts at Homeland have been concentrated on the work of the Ready Campaign and the Citizen Corps. Over the past two years, it's not an exaggeration to say that Ready has truly taken off and, frankly, has greatly exceeded our expectations and we've just begun. From coast to coast, 58 percent of Americans have taken at least one step to prepare their homes and their families. Obviously, taking three steps at a minimum, but we've got to crawl before we walk and obviously, we've got to take the first step before we can take the second or third.
We want them to put together that emergency kit, have that communication plan, and just, as a good citizen, stay informed. A great help in spreading the Ready message has been the Citizen Corps with over 1500 counselors delivering the preparedness message to countless communities and individuals. We've made a tremendous start with both of these initiatives, Ready and Citizen Corps, but it's only just a start.
Now, while we will continue to build on the Ready campaign and Citizen Corps, we know this is a collective endeavor. Each of you individually is just as important. Every organization you represent has made an equally large contribution to the National Public Preparedness Effort. Together, we have successfully developed a coalition of partners working together toward a single goal: to prepare America. Together, we are a much stronger, more effective force.
Winston Churchill once offered this advice: "We must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp as what is long and tough." Together, we have made a beginning, but our work is the challenge of many years to come. And we must be as equally engaged, motivated, and determined over the long term as we have been over the past two years.
At the Public Preparedness Symposium that many of you attended back in July that Pat referred to in her opening remarks, we engaged in thorough discussions, although with many helpful recommendations. The complete report is being released today and it includes many useful suggestions in what we can all do to help communities be better prepared.
And one of the most important, integral steps as we move forward is the development of a Shared National Readiness Metric. Communities and citizens want to know they've made progress and we need a means to measure that progress and define further changes that can be made to raise the standard of preparedness.
That's why I'm pleased and grateful that the Council for Excellence in Government is taking the lead in developing a Public Readiness Index. Similar to the Consumer Confidence Index, it will establish a baseline of preparedness that any city, any community can utilize and apply to their own protection effort.
Of course, the creation of this index will be the work of many partners from the public and private sector alike. Many of you are more than 100 leaders of the public and private sector, civic organizations dedicated to the Homeland Security mission who have already signed a statement in support of this new index. I think that is a very, very promising start for this collaborative effort and I commend and thank you for that. Since the genesis of this idea, we have firmly believed the process should not be imposed by the federal government, but driven from the grassroots level by the people who will be using the final product.
For while the federal government certainly has a role to play, the compelling force behind community preparedness efforts should always remain those citizens whose efforts serve and the organizations and first responders who are responsible for preparing and protecting citizens on a daily, firsthand basis. To that end, in the coming months and years, we must make a concerted effort to more closely integrate citizens with the work done by those on the operational side of preparedness. Every citizen has a role to play. Not in isolation, but in conjunction with preparedness professionals.
Let me give you an example. If a community is running a chemical attack scenario, part of that exercise should involve citizen participation and I don't mean just for the role of playing citizens. Not just the injured occupants of the vehicle or the affected occupants of the building, but to get others involved in providing some of that response and recovery effort.
This past summer, right here in D.C., an emergency exercise was run that included over 100 trained citizen volunteers in addition to the first responders. Officials were able to put their emergency plans and their procedures and their communication methods to the test. And they were able to find out firsthand what worked, what didn't, and how citizens could help them do their job more effectively. That's the type of integration between citizens and the emergency operators that we hope we see more of throughout the country.
What better way to learn how to ensure that we achieve that goal than to engage citizens up front in the development and practice of emergency protocols and procedures. Citizens too have a responsibility, a responsibility to make the message of emergency preparedness their personal charge. And it's our responsibility to ensure efforts begun by citizens are picked up and supported by every resource and tool at our disposal. Your time and your commitment so far has been instrumental in helping us strengthen awareness and spearhead action throughout the citizenry and communities of this vast, wonderful land we call home.
On Tuesday, I'll step down as Secretary of Homeland Security, but my commitment to my country's protection and my responsibility to do my part in upholding it is something that I will certainly not relinquish, besides and because that is the charge of every American. Because we're all in this together, ladies and gentlemen. Each of us bears the title of citizen and so, we must all also shoulder the responsibilities that accompany that wonderful and magnificent trust. And in doing so, we will ensure that future generations of citizens inherit more than just the title, but also the blessings of liberty that, in this great nation, the title of citizen actually represents.
Again, I thank you for your extraordinary effort. I wish you well in this venture and I look forward to finding ways to partner with you as we continue to make America more and better prepared, safer and more secure than we've ever been in the history of this great country. Thank you very much.
Ms. McGinnis: The Secretary is going to take a couple of questions before we launch into our panel discussion of the Readiness Index. So, have at it.
Secretary Ridge: And any answers I don't have, I'm going to defer to the panel of the experts.
Question: Mr. Secretary, the principals of the Council on Excellence in Government is trying to increase the compensation of public servants and make it more likely that unwealthy people can continue to serve.
With your service in the Congress, as Governor, and in the cabinet, you've been one of the greatest public servants we've ever had in this country. And the press reports that one of the reasons you're leaving is because of your being an unwealthy person in part because of your service.
Could you say anything about how that situation can be improved?
Secretary Ridge: Well, first of all, I mean -- I regret that there is any suggestion that that's the motivation to leave. You can have an interview and they can draw whatever conclusion they want. It's basically -- I've been doing this for 24 years and I'd, first of all, like to have a little more private time with family and friends.
And no one will ever go into public service with an idea of accumulating any kind of -- you know, a large bank account. But the rewards are different and frankly, in my judgment, they're equally if not more valuable than a big bank account. The rewards are emotional, they're intellectual.
Service is about -- the government, in my view, has always been about tomorrow. I mean, it's really what we do today that affects tomorrow, so you have an opportunity and I've been given an incredible opportunity. Hopefully, many political steps are -- this one appointed, the others elected, to hopefully shape tomorrow.
The one constituency in America that doesn't vote, that around whom more decisions, in my judgment, should be made are kids. If we thought of the world we wanted to leave them 20 or 30 years from now instead of immediate gratification that we think we need now, I think, frankly, we'd vote a lot different (inaudible) and the country would probably be a better place.
Secretary Ridge: You guys are pretty good. My generation has done pretty well. We had a little blip -- you know, called the Vietnam War, but beyond that, we think of what we inherited since World War II and nobody has lived in a time, in spite of the downturn in the stock market a couple of years ago and this little recession, they're talking about when it's going to get better.
So, I'm at really -- the primary goal is to sit back, exercise, spend a little more time with family and friends and then decide what -- if there's another chapter too I want to write in my own personal history.
But I encourage public service to every young man and woman I can see. You don't have to be elected to make a difference. I mean, we need good chemists, we need biologists, we need engineers, we need lawyers, we need anyone that we -- amazing, we had a couple of our young people, really young men and women in our department volunteer to go to Baghdad. They weren't military, but they saw what a lot of their peers were doing and when the call came out, they decided they were going (inaudible) -- you know, head (inaudible) or do whatever they could to help Jerry Bremer build a base for what's led, right now, to elections two or three days later.
So I don't think there's a public servant alive that would tell you that they wouldn't mind a pay raise once in a while, but I don't think, unfortunately in this country, we're ever going to get to the point where that becomes a high priority for the average citizen. And so be it; that's just the way it goes. You don't seek office or service to be anything other than to serve.
By the way, it's been a great ride. If you get to see the things I've had a chance to do in my life as a soldier, Congressman, governor, this was well worth it.
Question: I'm wondering about the most disadvantaged communities that seem to be inordinately hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters and potentially, most vulnerable. How will the systems that we're putting in place actually reach the most vulnerable?
Secretary Ridge: What was the first part of the question? When you talk about national security --
Question: How do we reach the most vulnerable populations, in that they're inordinately hit by most of the disasters that we're dealing with?
Secretary Ridge: Given the indiscriminate nature of terrorism, I think, number one, you have to operate that every citizen everywhere is a potential terrorist victim, although we know right now -- at least it's our view that the places most likely would be the places where greater and catastrophic loss of life or economic consequences could be affected.
But I don't think we'll ever have the luxury of guessing precisely where the attack will occur or what form the attack will take. And it is for that reason, although it's still somewhat controversial on the Hill, I have said -- within the Congress, I have said I still think there has to be certain dollars to go out to states large and small so that they can be better prepared as well.
So clearly, more dollars have been going in to the larger urban areas where you have a higher population density and frankly, where more potential targets -- the likes of which would result in a monstrous loss of life or economic damage. But I don't think we can afford the luxury of neglecting any part of America.
The smaller states, the smaller communities have to embrace the notion of mutual aid. They're doing that and as long as we build a national infrastructure, again, these small communities could just as easily be hit by that tornado, could just as easily have a train coming through with toxic chemicals roll over and suddenly -- it's not a terrorist attack at that point -- in regards to that scene, then we should have -- they had been prepared, they have the response equipment and they've got the mutual aid agreements, so I think it's just a good investment in America's all-around security and safety.
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This page was last reviewed/modified on 01/28/05 00:00:00.