>>>KAREN MARSH: My name is Karen Marsh and I'm the Director of FEMA's Community Preparedness Division, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you all here to the 2009 National Conference on Community Preparedness. Thank you so much for coming. Before we get started I have a few housekeeping items. Should we need to evacuate the building for any reason, you can use the central escalators, but there are also two fire exits on this floor. They are to the rear of the foyer, so please take note of them when you're-when you're outside in the area. Also, if you have any questions at all during the conference, please contact someone who's wearing one of the yellow badges. They are "In The Know" and will be able to help you. The conference is open to the press. They are an important partner in community preparedness, so we're very pleased to have 'em here today. Also, we are videotaping the plenary sessions and one of the breakout sessions so that for those who weren't able to be here today we'll be able to share some of the conference proceedings. And to support the safety and health of those around you, please be sure to practice good coughing and sneezing etiquette-in your sleeve or a tissue, wash your hands frequently or use the sanitizer that we've provided. So it's wonderful to see you all here today but I have a confession to make. It's a lot of work to put on a conference. "It takes a village" is an understatement. What it really takes is a dedicated team. So as my first order of official business I'd like to recognize the Community Preparedness Division staff. I'd like to ask them all to stand. Their names are on page 11 of our beautiful Conference Program. Are they standing? Please stand. [APPLAUSE] They are all incredibly dedicated public servants and I am very proud to serve with them. We also have staff from the FEMA regions and I'd like to ask them to also stand. We will be hearing from them throughout the conference in the Citizen Corps and Action Sessions and we are also having a regional networking event, so I strongly encourage you to get to know your FEMA representatives in the regions. I'd also like to thank our Conference Support Team from IAM and from ICF Macro. Again, "It takes a village." So look around you. We have in the room here today about 750 national partners, State and local emergency management, fire service, law enforcement, public health and emergency medical services, academics, advocacy groups, voluntary organizations, and members of the public. This conference brings together a uniquely diverse group unified by the mission of community preparedness and resilience. Participants here represent all 50 States, U.S. territories, tribes, and even international guests from Japan and Canada. Over the next 4 days we'll have over a 100 presentations on all facets of community preparedness and resilience. We'll discuss problems, ideas, and solutions and get the chance to learn from each other as we tackle the challenging goal of changing our culture. We've called this conference "The Power of Citizen Corps" because there is power in building a local structure and a process for government collaboration with civic leaders and community organizations. The 2,400 Citizen Corps Councils around the country know that. There is power in community outreach and education that ensures everyone in America is informed, trained, and practiced. And there is power in volunteer service to support emergency services, community preparedness and safety, and to be there to help others when the time comes. And we need strong, national leadership to provide a unifying message and to inspire us to action. And we are fortunate today to have with us powerful examples of that, too. First we will hear from FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate and then from the Department of Homeland Security, Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute. Craig was confirmed as the FEMA Administrator in May of 2009 and it's as though his whole life has led him here to this position in this moment. I know you in the audience are FEMA watchers so I'm sure you know his background of starting his career in Emergency Management as a volunteer firefighter and emergency paramedic rising to the Emerge-to be the Emergency Manager for the state of Florida where he managed 11 presidential disaster declarations and many more emergencies. I'm not sure if he wrestled any alligators when he was down there but he certainly wrestled with the federal bureaucracy, and I think that's part of the reason why he actually took this job. But I hope you're also aware of what he's been saying since he became FEMA Administrator. In the 3 months he's officially had a national platform, he has already significantly elevated the priority of citizens and community participation. And that's because he's seen it in action, he understands it, he believes it, and we will no doubt see much, much more. You all have been at the vanguard of this movement and it's a powerful combination when community activism and national leadership come together. It's my great pleasure to introduce FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. [APPLAUSE] >>>CRAIG FUGATE: Karen didn't leave much for me to say. So I'll start off with the alligators. No, I didn't wrestle 'em but here's what we do know about wrestling alligators-you don't quit when you're tired. [LAUGHTER] Same goes for being prepared and community preparedness. You don't quit when you're tired. You don't quit when there's less money or less resources or a greater demand for services. And it gets back to why I think it's so important that the public recognize that, first of all, FEMA is not the team; we are part of a team and you represent a good part of that team. But when you look at catastrophic disasters-and catastrophic is a term loosely defined by my house is destroyed, it's catastrophic, to, you know, it's a movie theme of, you know, the end of the world as we know it-but in those events that exceed the capability to bring outside resources fast enough to those survivors when the local response system is themselves impacted by disaster and unable to fulfill their primary function, when people are waiting for help to come from the outside, that's why I keep coming back to what was the resource that we haven't tapped into. When you look at catastrophic disaster planning-and we've been doing this for some time now-one of the things that really struck me when we were looking at, let's just take an example of, a south Florida major hurricane, was I had a room of probably the smartest people that I've ever worked with when it came to dealing with hurricane response. They'd been through the '04/'05 hurricane season, provided mutual aid to Katrina, had done a lot of stuff. Many of you had been to Florida during those storms. She... You saw what it was like to work through all those issues. So as we began looking at a bigger storm, one that was historically accurate, it was a real event... I hate these hypotheticals. I always like to go back to history cause it's scary enough just looking at what has happened. But when you kept looking at how we were gonna respond and all these response... And this involved not just the government base; we had private sector, we had volunteer organizations. But the thing that struck me was we kept talking about how many people we were gonna have to bring in to support this team. And it wasn't hundreds. It wasn't even in thousands. It was tens of thousands of people that were gonna have to come in from the outside. The problem with that was I said-I kept asking, "When will they get there? When will we complete search and rescue? When will it be safe? When will we have enough things there to start meeting basic needs?" If you took everything this country had and you took that approach, about 2 to 3 weeks before you got stabilized. So that's unacceptable. They said, "Well, there's no more. There's no more resources. That is taking every team we can get our hands on, that is exercising our mutual aid capacity to the absolute maximum, that's bringing in everybody including all of our assets under DoD. 2 to 3 weeks." I said, "I've got a question. What happened to the seven million people that lived there?" "They're the victims." "Ahhh, maybe we should change how we think about people." The tendency is when you read most disaster plans, does it ever identify the people that live there as a resource or as a liability? You know, our assumption is when disaster happens, everybody there turns into a bag of Jell-O. Right? Did everybody that was a doctor, a nurse, that worked construction, that had all these jobs, worked in retail, that suddenly they're just sitting there in this catatonic state going, "I'm waiting." I don't know about you but I've been in a lot of disasters. Do people just sit around and go, "I'm waiting?" Maybe a few, but what do most people start doing? >>>FS: Dialing their phone. >>>CRAIG FUGATE: They start helping. >>>FS: Dialing their phone. >>>CRAIG FUGATE: Well, they don't have dial tone yet. Or if they did, they all got the same dial tone. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. But I've been out quite a bit and the thing that kept striking me was in my whole history of doing this, I started about 1987, we always look at the public as a liability. We don't really say that but all of our planning assumptions are we're gonna have to take care of everybody. Right? And if we put anything in there, we say, "You need to get a plan and do this." But that's about it. And I came back and I was just this is surely just numbers to me. There's not enough resources that can get in fast enough from outside of the area, so what's left? It's the public that lives there. You know, for a long time we've told the public you need to get a plan and get ready. We never told them what to do after that. And a lot of folks just do it anyway. You know, once they make sure they're okay, they check on a neighbor. But we've actually kind of got this bias against the unaffiliated volunteers because we kind of go, "Well, you know, they'll just start doing stuff and there's all kinds of liability issues and they may not do the right thing, and all this other stuff. I'm like going, "They're doing something." Why don't we take an approach just a little bit differently, and it's not a big di-adjustment, but let's just start saying the public's not a liability; they're a resource. And let's look at the things we do every day in our messaging to tell them, "Hey, it is a good thing to check on neighbors. It is a good thing to take that additional step. And, hey, if we do show up and you wanna work, what's your skill sets? What are you doing every day in the community that you could help out in a disaster?" Now when you come back to the emergency management folks at the local level, they just kind of like go, "Craig, great idea but how do we manage that? We don't have the resources. We don't have the people. Many of us are seeing our shops get smaller cause of layoffs and attrition. So how do we mobilize that public?" Gee, it kind of looks like something that Citizen Corps is doing already, right? That we're trying to bring together this definition that we're not gonna build a government-centered response; we're gonna built a community-based response. And we're gonna bring in both the traditional and the nontraditional players in the community, cause, again, there's those of us that, whether we're volunteers... I see some amateur radio tags out there. I got a card from (Inaud.) Air Patrol. I... You know, I recognize faces and tags. There's a lot of us that we go beyond that step. We may not be a full-time person or we may not be part of paid staff, but our organizations are pretty active. We have a lot of history working in disasters. But not every part of a community does. And, again, in a lot of smaller disasters we do just fine, but in the bigger ones, we need everybody. And we need a place to bring people together so they have a seat at the table and they have ownership of the process. The other thing I found in doing all this is you just can't lay out requirements to people and say, "You gotta do it this way. You gotta follow this. You gotta do this or you can't play." That you have to give them some ownership, give them a seat at the table. I mean, I can remember not that long ago, which we were talking about animal issues in the disaster. And I've seen some of the folks here representing that community. They didn't have a seat at the table. And they weren't asking us, the emergency managers, to take care of all these animals; they were just asking for a place at the table to bring their resources together and work as a team. And so as I've gone back and looked over disasters, as I came to FEMA I had this bully pulpit. And I remember my first meeting with Secretary Napolitano and she was... We were meeting and she was checking me out and asking me about things. She had served as governor and when I started talking about the public and roles and responsibilities and that I didn't see FEMA as the team, as it's often time portrayed as everything is FEMA, I said, quite honestly, FEMA's force, we get a lot of credit for things that are done every day in the communities by you guys. But the overall description of that is that must be FEMA. I said, "We really need to change that dialogue and get people to understand FEMA is part of a team." We're part of Department of Homeland Security, we're part of the Federal family, we're part of a partnership with our governors, our local emergency managers, our traditional response community, our private sector, our community faith-based. The list keeps going. And the public. We're a part of that team; we're not the team. And we cannot respond effectively as a Nation to the threats we know about and the threats we don't understand or haven't dealt with before. So another part of this I find is that we often times try to write plans around the things we have a lot of comfort and understanding. They may be scary things but we understand them. And so we tend to also find ourselves dealing with things that we have comfort with but if something doesn't fit into that plan, we either don't wanna deal with it or, two, we don't really understand it. And I'm going, "Well, you guys ever had disasters go the same way every time?" So let's try something a little bit differently. Instead of building plans and teams around the things that we think are gonna always happen this way, why don't we build teams that can solve the problems we know and the problems we didn't even know could exist. I mean, this is the other part of this. Instead of writing plans that are so prescriptive on how we're gonna do everything, why don't we write plans that describe the team and how the team's gonna work. Well, if we're doing that, then we need to again come back and that little piece that we put in there about the public is not a liability anymore, we now gotta pe-put a piece in there about how do we engage the team, not just the government part of the team but the whole community. And, again, if you look at our plans, we don't have good mechanisms for doing that. But Citizen Corps does. It's a good hook into the system. But how many of you find yourselves sometimes with a-kind of this division of labor that that you've got an emergency plan, you have a Citizen Corps but you're not really quite sure how it plugs in as part of the original plan? All right? But if we're just part of the team, then that plan has to recognize what are all the pieces of the team. And some of 'em have really good connectivity, they've got good hooks, it's a natural part of the program. Others, unless you engage that planning process, you're gonna miss opportunities. Then a third part of this that I've been looking at... Again, this is about 1987. I've been either writing, reviewing, or looking at plans. You know what I've come to a conclusion? We plan for easy. We don't plan for hard. Think about it. In all these disasters we've had, would it not make a reasonable assumption that in every community in this country there are people who are poor, that there are people who don't drive, that there are people that English isn't their first language, that people may have more challenges, that in most communities we have children, over 50 percent of the population has pets? Then why don't we write plans that say we're gonna plan for people basically that are adults, middle income, have cars, drive, English is the first language, high school or greater education with no other attributes, and then try to figure out why our plan didn't work. So you know what our historical response has been, since we already wrote the plan? We create a box and we put a box out here. It says, "We're gonna create a box to plan for this part of the community that's harder." What message does that send? And, again, as I look at my friends from the International Association of Emergency Managers, what does that do to their workload? They wrote the plan given the guidance we gave 'em. Now we come back and say, "You need to do another box. Whoops, need to do another box! Whoops, need to..." We've got more of the community in the boxes than we do in the plan. Well, let's try a novel approach. Let's write the plans based upon the community, not just the folks that fit our definition of the ideal survivor, but people that really live there, who every day have challenges in the day-to-day existence that in a disaster getting magnified. I mean, think about all the effort and everything we end up doing planning. That if we just built this into the steps we took to get ready, how much more efficient our time would be and how much better we'd be at identifying those resource needs early versus after. So our planning really, I think, has to come back to some basic tenets. People are a resource, not a liability. You have to plan around the community and incorporate the community into the plan, not just be government-centered. And, three, we need to write our plans based upon the communities' needs, not what's easy to do or fits our definition of the ideal survivor. A couple more things you probably, if you've ever been around me, have observed - that I tend to be very specific about how I use certain terminology. I'm not using the term "victim" to talk about people that have survived a disaster. I think, first of all and this is really not something I came up with-this was talking to mental health and behavioral (inaud.) looking at how people deal with that kind of trauma. That using the term "victim" really doesn't describe what they're doing, and it also isn't very empowering to people because the term "victim" generally means that I'm waiting for somebody to take care of me instead of recognizing they're not waiting, they're doing. They're survivors. So I tend to use that term a lot, that I talk about the survivors. The second thing is I don't refer to things as natural disasters, although that's an easy thing for me to fall back into when I talk about natural hazards. Disasters come about because of the way we build, live, and operate in our communities. So one of the things, you know, we talk a lot about is response. We don't talk as much about it as how do we reduce future impacts. A big piece of that's mitigation. You know, that's a hard message to sell because mitigation is one of those things that unless you have a disaster, you never really see the benefits of it at the micro level. Now on the macro level when we step back at FEMA, we step back to the Federal Government, we can see that across a lot of communities. But generally in your community, to invest in mitigation, particularly in persons' homes, which is an additional cost, right, times are tough, people are upside down in their mortgages and you're saying, "Hey, you ought to be doing some things to make your home more safe"-hard sell. But that message is the most important message, I think, when we talk about how to reduce the impacts of future disasters. It's how do we as communities make decisions about where we build, how we build, the building codes we haven't enforced, and what people do to reduce those impacts. Those are very tough conversations in tough economical times. Trust me, if the only people carrying that message is just emergency managers, we won't be successful. That's another part of what Citizen Corps does, is you're another voice out there talking about how we prepare, respond, and recover but also mitigate. And the last one that was added to our charter as part of FEMA and the post-Katrina Emergency Management (Unint.) is how do we protect. The threat of events that we understand and know-Oklahoma City, World Trade Center '93, September 11th, anthrax-are things that when you talk to most emergency managers about, when we talk all hazards, that's what we mean. But that also now embraces another part of community that historically we didn't really communicate well. And that is the part of the government, the part of the team, the part of the community that looks at how we reduce the future threat of protecting ourselves against terrorism. And, again, that's also a message that the further away we get from certain events they tend to be lost. But the relationship between what they call left of boom (ph.) and then right of boom is not a clear divisible line. As we saw in our national level exercise, that as much as we were focusing on the left of boom, the investigation to prevention, everything that was going on, you still had to be looking at what would happen and the consequences if an event did occur. And we also have to make sure we bridge that divide, cause the public in a crisis will do a lot of things themselves. But the one thing they do expect is leadership. We, the team, is that we're the leaders. And part of that leadership is part of the team I got to join. When I was asked to interview, I was as much curious about what was going on up here with the new team coming on board as I was about any particular job. I was really just coming up to meet the new Secretary of Homeland Security and it was-it was an interesting conversation. It was a bizarre situation to come up and start talking about things and really, you know, I thought they were gonna ask me more about, you know, my qualifications, stuff like that. It was really... My conversation with Secretary Napolitano was really kind of curious, cause we were talking more about things that resonated with me as an Emergency Manager of the team, of being part of a team, of looking at building capability and resources that could respond more effectively with the resources we have. And so when I was asked by the President to serve in that capacity as the FEMA Administrator, I wasn't looking at coming in and just being FEMA; I was looking at coming in and joining the Federal team. Because if you look at really what FEMA does, we facilitate, we coordinate, and we have a checkbook. Right? But most of the response, if it exceeds local and State capability, actually reside in other parts of our Federal family. A big part of that's Homeland Security with all the components and then across the Federal family in our Department of Defense and all the assets of the Federal Government. So as I came on board, I went through my confirmation hearing. Guess who I got my first phone call from. The person I'm about to introduce. Cause, again, a good thing about joining this team is it is a team. There's a lot of echoes in the-that are still bouncing around about what has happened in the past, and one of the things I'm very proud of is we don't talk about the past as much as we talk about where we're going in the future in this country. And to do that, the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary have been setting the stage for all of DHS to work as a team, not losing our identities in what we do, what our core competencies are, but really building the team and providing the ability to leverage all of the platforms of Homeland Security. And that in turn makes us stronger in working across the Federal family. So part of the Secretary's team, part of the Deputy Secretary's team of Homeland Security is a big piece of-big reason why I wanted to come up here, cause I thought this was an environment we could be successful. So as part of our success at FEMA, let me introduce to you the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Jane Lute. [APPLAUSE] >>>JANE LUTE: I was coming in this morning and walking in the door I said, "Hey, Craig, these are all your peeps." He said, "No, these are the peeps' peeps." And I join you as one this morning who is a great admirer of the work that you do. Secretary Napolitano certainly is well known to you and you to her, but you're a community that I'm getting to know, both Citizen Corps as a group and you. And the functions that you provide, where you provide it, is becoming known to me and it's an extraordinary privilege to be able to learn what you do from the position and background that I come from. I've spent the past 30 years in a very different environment, in the environment of international war and conflict. I spent the first half of my adult life as a soldier in the United States Army so I appreciate this morning... Yeah, Hoo-A. [APPLAUSE] I appreciate this morning listening to the opening march and the Star Spangled Banner and then the advertisement for the Marine Corps. If that doesn't make you jump up out of your chair and go sign up, I don't know what does. But Citizen Corps is, as I say, well known and very much respected by us in the Department. I'm very pleased to be able to say that as a result, the Secretary is reinstituting the Greeter Program of Citizen Corps because she does value it so much, and we do as well. I thought what I would do this morning is talk to you a little bit about what we are trying to do in the Department of Homeland Security so you can understand our context in the context of what Craig was talking about, how we see our mission, the vision that the Secretary has outlined, the priorities that we've established, and where preparedness at an individual level, at a community level, at a national level fits. We in DHS believe that we are leading the American effort to protect ourselves. This country can protect itself from all hazards. We will protect this country from terrorist attacks and we will respond to all shared risks through preparedness and resilience. Now this is something that you know well, and I have to say that it's striking to see the contrast between the preparedness that soldiers take on and the preparedness that civilians take on, and I'll talk about that in a little bit. But in this vision-in this vision of preparing America or leading the American effort to protect itself, we will focus on five key tasks that the Secretary has outlined. We will protect this country against terrorist attacks through a vigorous counterterrorism program that's designed to deny entry to terrorists and reduce our vulnerabilities. We will ensure secure borders, borders that on the one hand keep out dangerous people and dangerous goods but on the other hand borders that-and a border experience that expedites legitimate trade and travel because we need to do both. We'll focus on systems that accurately detect what's happening, deny entry and, again, direct in an expeditious way legitimate trade and travel. We will reduce our vulnerability here at home through programs that get America prepared-and this is what you do-not just from terrorist attacks but from all hazards, as Craig said. You know your communities better than anyone. You know what people need. My experience is that there are key elements that are necessary in a crisis when a community is under stress, my experience in the international setting. Yes, people need shelter; yes, people need water; yes, people need food; yes, people need protection and safety; but people also need information. If you don't have an informed public, you do not have a stable public. People will take matters into their own hands. They don't become bags of Jell-O in my experience; they become action officers. People will take matters into their own hands. And the first thing that I observe-have observed in international crises and, again, mine are far flung and far afield under very different circumstances than what you have experienced here, the first thing people do is look for a dial tone. And they will both inform and be informed by whomever they come in contact with, whether or not those people know what they are talking about, because a little information in the hands of the eager is a dangerous thing, as we all know. Those of us who have children certainly know this. And we need to, as a leadership, have the right information, be knowledgeable about what's happening. And we'll talk-I'll talk a little bit more about that later. Have information that is salient and valuable and instructive to people who are under stress, and we need to be decisive about what people should do. Dithering is a huge liability in a crisis in my experience. I suspect that you'll have found that to be similar-true. So we will reduce our vulnerabilities to all hazards by creating a public that is prepared through empowered individuals, capable communities, and a responsive Federal system that knows how it can lend help and bring help to bear. People have asked me at times what's the difference between Homeland Security and national security, and I tell them it is the difference between protect and defend. And these are important differences. These words are not synonyms for each other. What goes into protection? Individuals who have the information they need and understand what they are supposed to do, individuals who feel empowered to act responsibly when they're under stress, communities that are capable-this is what you know best-that have the guidelines, the training, the equipment, the practice, the habits of interaction and the understanding of themselves that is so necessary to respond and to mobilize appropriate resources when disaster strikes. And we will be in the Department at the forefront of national efforts to build responsive Federal systems within the Federal Government. We will also work on immigration, as you know from Secretary Napolitano. This is an aspect of our job in Homeland Security. Why? Because there is probably no more fundamental right a nation has than the right to know who's living and working in their borders. And we will do all of this while we unify and mature the Department of Homeland Security. People ask me, "What's it like in the Department? It's a very young Department. It's only 7 years old." I tell them that's the good news. The department is 7 years old. It is not 1 year old for the seventh time. We know the difference, don't we? Those who have gone before us have done a remarkable job in establishing this department with the ambit of its responsibilities, giving it the kind of recognition that you all have. And when people say Homeland Security, they know it is our job to help lead the American effort to protect ourselves against all hazards. But as I mentioned, the first part of my adult life was-I spent in the military, and soldiers learn a few things. And one of the things that you learn very early on is that no plan survives first contact and the first report is always wrong. The first report is always wrong. It's wrong. And that-those-those two principles, it seems to me, translates directly into the world that you live in, as Craig was saying. So in order for us to succeed in helping lead the American effort to protect ourselves, we really must begin with the individual. We need to give them the confidence that they know what to do and they know why they are doing it. What depends on why. Why are you asking me to do this? Why should I take off my shoes? Why should I run out to the parking lot and cross the street before I mobilize and look for others? Why? What depends on why. Now this is a core principle that we learn in the military and it is a core principle that I have observed in this world as well. An effective and empowered individual understands not only what to do but why they should do it. And, as I said earlier, they're all action officers. They all have telephones or mobiles and they are reaching out to people and people are reaching out to them. If nothing else, they're talking to the group of people that are around them in the crisis. Seldom do we talk about crises of one. Crises usually happen in groups and people will talk to each other, as you well know, and inform themselves. Leaders emerge almost always in that kind of a context in my experience. And it's important for people to know not only what to do but why they are being asked to do it. Why does it work? People don't wanna use that moment to experiment. In successful strategies for survival, they wanna know what works and why, and it's our job to help do that. There are three principles, as I mentioned earlier, that I think that I have learned in the course of my experience that seem relevant here. The first principle is nothing about you without you. Nothing about you without you. And what does that mean? That means even those of us in leadership, whether we be leadership in the Department of Homeland Security, leadership at a national level, leadership at a local level, or leadership in the family, if you want to have effective strategies that involve others, you need to involve them in others in the formulation of that strategy and in the decisions that you make. Otherwise, people will resist unnecessarily and they won't understand why they're doing things. And, in fact, they might have better ideas. And so when you operate on the principle of nothing about you without you, my experience is you end up with better strategies. It takes an effort but you don't have to sacrifice decisiveness for inclusiveness. If people are included in formulating strategies and decisions, you can also be decisive. In fact, you may find it easier to be decisive because people will have the confidence that you know how to lead them. Now this can have a back-a back-a backlash affect, I know. My own kids remind me of this all the time. "Nothing about me without me." "Nothing about me without me, Mamma." I know it's true but by and large my experience is it is a much sounder way for proceeding, particularly when you're in a group endeavor and particularly when you're under crisis. Involve people in the decision. There is almost always time, and when there's not time, you can become directive. But otherwise it is-it is wise, in my judgment, to be inclusive. The second principle is also one I mentioned, which is what depends on why. What you want me to do depends on why you are asking me to do it and why this is the right thing to do. As I mentioned, why do we ask people to take off their shoes at TSA checkpoints? Why do we ask people to mobilize across the street and away from a building that might be at risk? Why do we ask people to practice and train in fire drills? And if you're in New York City, this may not be so difficult, but if you're in other places farther removed either from the events of 9/11 or the routine catastrophes of tornadoes and hurricanes, it may be more difficult to explain to people why. A very successful campaign of why is the Stop, Drop, and Roll Campaign that fire-that the fire community has promulgated. Every child knows stop, drop, and roll, and they know why. They know why this is the smart, right thing to do. And so it-it's an important principle, in my view, to remember about successful engagement in crises. And, again, here I think the experience I have will dovetail with yours. The final principle that I have is that preparedness is power. When people are prepared, not scared, they're confident. And when people are confident, they come-become more effective agents on their own behalf in a crisis. And I can't underscore this enough, it's really striking to me that when people know what to do, when they have the reasons underlying it, when they know why this is important to do, when they take the steps to prepare themselves-whether with emergency water or emergency food-they feel confident that they can handle what's coming. And they feel confident that because you are the ones that helped lead them to that state of preparedness, that you will be the ones that will lead them when a crisis emerges. I mentioned before that there is a strike-there has been a striking thing that I've observed about the difference between soldiers and civilians in crises. It's really quite striking. And the young men and women who serve in our Armed Forces, just as the young men and women who answer the personal calling that they have to help their communities in emergency preparedness and response, are really been an inspiration to me throughout my career. They are the future of this country and we're very lucky for it. But there's a difference between the way soldiers approach crises and the way civilians do. Soldiers go into this business-go into the business of soldiering expecting the worst humanity has to offer. Civilians do this work believing in the best humanity has to offer. It's extraordinary. And in the United States of America we are blessed with extraordinary communities of both. And it's my privilege to be able to join this morning and salute you. Thank you very much. [APPLAUSE]