nancy ward who is our region nine fema director. we have cal e.m.a. here, mike dayton and his staff. chief greg sir and they brought their whole command staff. we have many nert scroll teers. nert was a group that came about from 9/11 i mean -- shows where my mind is. from loma prieta. we have a lot prepared for you and i want to welcome our two chiefs up. joanne, would you like to start with a few words and then chief greg sir after that? >> thank you, anne, for the kind introductions. it was amazing 22 years ago this city in the bay area region experienced the loma prieta earthquake. i was not yet in the fire department. it was about five months before i joined and like anne alluded to, if anyone lived here, they remember where they were. >> i was at a high school when it happened and all of us remember the frightening moments and the aftermath of loma prieta. and it's always fitting when we celebrate an anniversary to take a minute not only to commemorate that but to next on the importance of how the community needs to step up an

for years we gave the impressions that -- i'll speak for fema. we're going to be there. we're going to help. we're not going to be there right away. we'll be there as quickly as we can. and initially, the true heroes in response, as we saw in tusk louisa and saw in newark, new jersey, recently. saw in upstate new york and vermont are the first responders. the police officers, the paramedics, the e.m.t.'s and nurses and doctors and neighbors helping neighbors. talked to a woman in tennessee last year during the floods in nashville, and it was this home that was completely flooded. actually it was a week later, and it was being mucked out or cleaned out by again, lutherans and another, i forget the other name of the other faith-based group. there were two groups cleaning up her front home and she's sitting out this 86-year-old woman saying all these nice people are helping me clean out literally what's left of their home and she said i wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for my neighbor that broke my front window out and pulled me out and saved her life. he was a nice youn

he has gone to fema. that's an important effort that fema has undertaken. something that the deputy administrator was talking about. i think the state should bring somebody in there as well. [laughter] yeah, right. i have toe say here in the state we are lucky to have the california resiliencey law and peter who has done a lot of incredible work with the private sector. so once again, so many good ideas, so many things have happened here. just remarkable. state of the art. now, the work that you have to do, we have some questions. my colleague prepared some questions. we don't have a lot of time. we have one mike there in the center, and we had way too many questions. we have 15 minutes or so. but i think maybe the best question to ask, jim, is the last one that we had which is like looking back at the last two-plus decades since loma prieta, you know, what concerns us collectively as a group, you know, most about our current response and recovery capacity and what do we think our greatest stride has been the time as regional community to engage bay area co

that gets back to the concern that fema had about network congestion. we won't have the problem of network congestion on this network unless we have so many public safety users that we're -- you know, but that would be a good thing. we would hope that we have a lot of users on the network. but we won't have to share it with commercial users. in a large event or in an emergency, everybody gets on their cell phone these days. everybody wants to contact relatives, loved ones, find out if they're ok. in many cases they're taking pictures and sharing photos and videos and really, you know, using up the commercial space. and the key with bay web is we wouldn't have to worry about sharing the network with commercial users. it's controlled. the technology, 4-g l.g.e. technology allows you to prioritize data transmissions. so, for example, if you have a command -- if you have an incident out on the field and you need to set up a command post, you can allocate more bandwidth to that commander in the field to allow that commander to view several different videos a

most of the complaints are about fema, so i go to bat for them. fema becomes the dictator. they come in, and there was one flood where fema was keeping out the red cross. they take over, with the department of homeland security and fema, they take over all police activities. katrina was a disaster. they went in and started confiscating guns. there is no constitutional authority for the government to be doing this, no matter how well intended. it has not been around that long, and it teaches people to take a risk they should not take. interesting. [applause] >> hi, dr. paul. i like a lot of what you said, but i like a lot of what all lot of politicians say -- i like a lot of what many politicians say. if you belong to a party, how are you going to get congress to do what you say we need them to do? >> it is the key question. and i am going to start off by saying something, because i am going to challenge you, but my challenge is that we got into this mess because we had too much by partisanship, you know? because the right and left get together, and they want to spend money.

we have a $10 million grant for the project with fema for security work. the work under this grant must be procured under federal guidelines, which are somewhat different from city guidelines. in any case, the scopes of work will have a disadvantaged business enterprise goal of 25%. staff requests approval of an amendment for the construction manager general contractor contract to increase the contract amount from $9,989,251 to $41,000,740, and to authorize staff to further increase the contract amount by 3,000,927 $676 for a contract modification or change or if needed for unanticipated contingencies. i would like to add that our bid for our steel for our project are due this afternoon, and we are anxious to see how they go. this concludes our presentation. i would be happy to answer any questions you may have. commissioner brandon: thank you. we have a motion and a second on the floor, so i will go into public comment. >> thank you. good morning, commissioners. good morning, president brandon. i want to emphasize that i'm so happy that we are nearing the

i was in congress in 1976 and i always argued against fema. bad economic policy but if every hurricane why do you pay me to rebuild my beach house. and also, what it does, people do things differently, like indicated, why fix it when i'm going to get the government to do at? as if the government is magic, it's just some of the neighbor in another state. but on the coast what they teach you to do is, if you're not, if you don't go along with fema insurance and the flood insurance they say you don't care or you know that the people what's going to happen. what would they do if they did have the government subsidizing your insurance? they go we can't afford. what is that telling you? its dangers. if it's dangerous and reliable have your house of a way, why should we dump it on the taxpayer? we encourage people to build and the wrong place so people build property, the agitator was, i will build my house a little better, or i will pay more for my insurance instead they are some people in houston, i think they're trying to stop it. they have had th

the head of office disability and coordination and the head of fema were there addressing the conference and reflecting a real change in our current administration's emphasis on disaster preparedness for disabilities as a civil right. the team that came from san francisco included ben ames from the human services agent si. rod stengel from the department of emergency managements. carle and jill from the mayor's office on disability. they highlighted not only the wonderful things the mayor's office is doing but also collaboration with so many community groups and nonprofits to have a really grassroots ground-up approach to preparedness. i thought you'd want to know that. >> very good, thank you. other? yes. thank you for sharing that. i just wanted to record that it's the 22nd anniversary of [inaudible] the neighbored emergency response team is always a great option for people to consider investing about 1 hours of their time. it's a wonderful program and on october 14 there will be a large-scale drill at fisherman's who i have about 8:00 until 9:00 and on the 16th, there will be drilts t

and download their school plan, i and other people wrote the original plant that fema adopted. it goes back to what you raised earlier, what are we going to do? the reality is that schools, because they are standard, will be the gathering planes after the major disasters. so the partnership with schools have to be very good because we may move in with them for a long time in some neighborhoods. after the firestorm, oakland tech was waiting to get rid of the people who lived there for about six weeks before we could find enough shelter and find out which people were chronically homeless and which were disaster victims. that to el little bit of time and money. but there may not be a difference in a major disaster. i think that the police departments had to work closely with the community, and we have been trying to organize neighborhood of large groups. it is exactly what you do when getting ready for a disaster tech. we have been looking at doing cross-training. if you have a group that comes together, and never had a large, it is also the center you will probably get together t

fema had a banner year. you talk to democrats and know ares and lawmakers from all over who dealt with the disasters, 11 topped $1 billion. fema did a fantastic job responding ahead of the storm and providing a disaster relief as quickly as possible to the victims. if you think back a few years to how it performed after hurricane katrina, to say that fema has bipartisan praise. >> government waste? >> that was another big issue on improper payments and people who had medicare and medicate and took tax credits and the irs hasn't stopped them, it's a shrinking problem to its credit. the obama administration has been doing a lot to find this wasteful spending and cut down on it. it's a test of reporters and other who is keep tabs to make sure the numbers drop in the new year. they have done a good amount of cutting or made plans to cut. >> with some of the other positive things you wrote about is the freedom of information act and they're more efficient when it comes to that. >> agencies overall are granting fr

you hear fema talking about community-based recovery. you see the fire and police people with all the training. you know, none of this existed back then. so a lot of things have changed. technology. i mean, think about it. here we are, we go to an event and everybody says, turn your cell phone on to silent. then we do that. then we do our email and everything. you know, they gave me a cell phone in 1989 when they gave me the orange vest that said incident commander. and by the way, at that time probably two weeks before the earthquake i wouldn't have known an incident commander from commander cody in the lost planet airman. that's a reference if you're a certain age. but in any case, they gave me the cell phone. remember what a cell phone was like in 1989? it was a sear's die-hard battery. you have to carry this around, charlie. i was like, oh, yeah. ok. it was pretty cool. i tried it a couple times. after about a day of that my shoulders were hurting and everything. i said, this is a repetitive stress injury waiting to happen. so i kind

so i am committed to fund fema administration, to fund the department. we can cut, we've made some cuts, but i'm telling the other side, you just can't keep cutting administration and then turn around and expect the same agencies to ferret out fraud, waste, and abuse. you need good managers to do that, and we must continue to fund them. i'm proud that i was able to include $358 million for six fast coast guard cutters. those happen to be built in louisiana. i'm proud of that. but the decision was made well before i got to be chair of this committee for that construction, and i'm proud to have funded that effort and to give the coast guard the upgrade of equipment that they need to do the work that we're asking them to do. and their work just continues to go up. they are very popular -- they are a very popular part of our federal government. everyone, i think, loves the coast guard. we are very fond of them in louisiana because we depend on them for so many things, and i think that their fleet needs to be upgraded. some of these ships are built in other s

fema does not know how many people will be affected by the change. >>> 2011 may end up the safest on record for fliers. according to the firm a sand, there has been one fatality for every 7 million passengers traveling on a flight around the world. that compares to the previous record of one test per 6.4 million fliers in 2004. while officials are pleased they stress workers must remain vigilant. >>> it is a chilly morning this morning. >> much colder than yesterday. yesterday was 40 degrees at this time. now we are in the 20's. this weekend is going to be mild as well but next week -- >> there is always a but. >> we could have a perhaps the coldest air by tuesday and wednesday. take a look at the numbers. 20 in western agenda. one of the typically cooler spots, 23. 21 in ashburn. in the district, warmer. we have the effects of the heat within the city, all of the concrete. 33. keep in mind the thermometer is along the potomac and the waters are warmer than the air temperature. 31 in annapolis. it is a cold start to the day. luckily we do not have the wind. no wind chill factor to ta

i go to bat for them, because fema is holding things up. fema becomes the dictator. there was one flood where fema was keeping out the red cross. they take over with the department of homeland security all the police activity. katrina was a disaster. they started confiscating guns. there is no constitutional authority for the government to be doing this now matter how well intended. it has not been around that long and it teaches people to take risks they should not take. interesting story. glad to hear that one. [applause] >> i like a lot of what you say, but i like a lot of what politicians say. the question i had for you is the same for everyone this year. how are you going to get congress to work with you? i am so sick of bipartisan this and bipartisan that. if you belong to a party, how hard you want to get congress to do what you say we need to do? >> it is the key question, and i will start by saying something because i want to challenge you. my challenge is we got into this mess because we had too much bipartisanship. the right and left get together and they

fema is not going to do that for you. and that was just a spontaneous effort. now it has expanded around the world. this came out of burning man, this wild, crazy party. >> let us start over here with a question. >> i would like to ask a question about dpw. the people that build infrastructure. i want to know why they do not get workers' comp when they are injured. >> of course they do. who told you they did not? >> my friends who work for dpw. they did not have insurance. >> we have workers' comp. i assure you, they are wrong. once in awhile, an employer will claim workers, for something that did not happen on the job. there have been a couple of incidents like that. there could have been discontent over that. of course we have workers caught. ask them again. when did they work for dpw? >> one of them just tweeted me the question. >> my name is anne marie. i represent in north of market community benefit district, the tenderloin. we are very excited to have your company coming in. just talking about the burning man twist, that is an interesting phrase. this ma

. >>> there's a new development regarding the 5.8 quake, fema says five additional counties are eligible to receive federal disaster aid. they include the city of fredericksburg. if you want more information on how to apply for help, go to our website, www.nbcwashington.com and search earthquake. >>> turning to the weather now. a lot of folks saw snow flurries today. >> just a little bit. this was the scene around 2:00 this afternoon. there was snow in the northern areas. i think meteorologist doug kammerer calls that conversational snow. >> conversational snow is all. something to start the conversation. hey, did you see the snow? it was pretty in some areas. i saw some in montgomery village, loudoun county seeing some of the snow. most of that is now out of here. look at the radar behind me to see where the snow is now. it's snowing in portions of pennsylvania, over the pennsylvania border, maryland-pennsylvania border and wilmington and to the west around frostburg seeing flakes there, too. that's about it. maybe a few flurries this evening. most of us stay on the dry side of things.

grants distributed by fema do not begin to cover costs of homes or first floors were submerged. >> the holidays act as got a little bit brighter for some patients thanks to members of the fee a staff and community volunteers. more than 600 gift packages were delivered at the veterans affairs medical center. the packages included everything from toiletries to fleece blankets to craft kits. it is so nice to have something like that in the holidays when you are in the pop -- in the hospital. >> 2011 will go down as the worst year ever for one specific industry. where she will tell you what needs to change in 2012 in consumer reports. >> remember this? >> transforming i wish to parking lots. allstate officials are working to make sure truckers do not constrained of this year. >> 1 soldiers emotional homecoming. >> i've loved this story. >> he surprised his sons after seven months and iraq. >> the weather has settled down. we will tell you what to expect for the holiday weekend. >> coming up, a stand off has ended and congress passes the two month tax extension. what it means for you. also,

the united states condemns the treatment of a fema protester. >> sectarian tensions rise in iraq as an arrest warrant is issued for the highest ranks in the official. the imf has received billions of dollars in the latest attempt to try to build of the eurozone. -- bail out the eurozone. >> it is noon in singapore. >> it is 4:00 a.m. in london. welcome to "newsday." >> the united states, japan, and south korea are considering holding talks on the situation in north korea after the death of kim jong il. the chinese president went to the north korean embassy in beijing. china has been no. correa's closest ally, and a visit underlines that support. john simpson reports. >> this is the weird, reclusive figure who ran the world's most secretive country, and did it as though it was his own private playground. looking on was his son, kim jong un, who is around 28. no one knows for sure. he will take over. the old leader died on saturday, but state television only announced it today. the news unleashed a storm of emotion, genuine or otherwise. in north korea, you have to mourn the leader as wa

fema extended the deadline to apply from january 3 until march 5. homeowner, renters, and business owners can apply for money to help with repairs. people in maryland could still be dealing with hurricane irene next year. that's because pepco wants them to pay for the utilities cost. it filed for a rate adjustment. a rate adjustment that would raise rates by $5. pepco needs the money in part to pay for resources used up during hurricane irene. the rate hike would start in july. that's if they approve it. >>> this winter warm spell is bringing along some rain. so could it put a dampening on our holiday spirits? topper tells us about it in his forecast. also ahead, cheers of joy. local families welcome home loved ones who is been in harm's way. u.s. troops among the last to leave iraq. stay with us. yeah, i'm married. does it matter? you'd do that for me? really? yeah, i'd like that. who are you talking to? uh, it's jake from state farm. sounds like a really good deal. jake from state farm at three in the morning. who is this? it's jake from state far

fema says home and business owners in five additional counties are now able to receive federal disaster aid. they include culpeper, fluvana, goo goochland, and spotsylvania counties. louisa county was already approved for aid. for more information on how to apply for help, visit our website nbcwashington.com and search "earthquake." >>> some people in northern virginia were having flashbacks of that quake after they felt their houses shake yesterday. the rumbling came from explosives training at the marine corps base in quantico. that training has been going on the whole month, but yesterday it was different. people heard a loud boom, and for many the shaking was so strong it revived the memories of the rare quake that shook our whole area four months ago. >> all of a sudden, i just like -- it just was like huge rumble. it was so loud. and i just remember getting up off the couch. >> experts think that the explosion was felt yesterday because of the overcast conditions. the last earthquake recorded in virginia was very early on christmas eve. it was a 2.0 quake near mineral. >>> the new

thanks to this $15 million grant from fema called the safer grant, the department is slowly replacing those 49 firefighters, 22 of them were sworn in in the summer, the others found jobs elsewhere. well, today there will be a badging ceremony for nine more firefighters at 3:00. >> every firefighter that we could hire helps us. we hope with these nine, and it doesn't sound like much, but it's important, we are still -- so this additional nine, you know, could staff those two companies. >> reporter: they transferred from other departments and 18 more transfers will go through this modified academy beginning in february. that means san jose will soon have the staffing levels back to where it was two years ago. some argue that's still not enough to meet the demands of the third largest city in the state. the safer grant is good for two years, but the hope is that through retirements and attrition the new firefighters will be able to stay permanently. >> yeah, we hope to attrition that the 49 we're eventually going to hire, we're going to be able to retain them through june of 2013, which

we have the earlier $10 million fema security grant. most of that expenditure will be in phase two, and that match is really our security needs in phase two. so there is about $8,500,000 going into the phase two security systems. the other major funding for that work will be a future bond for the park itself. we have been doing value engineering as the design has progressed, and we're just now finishing the design. we're going to bcdc on january 9, i believe, to try to reconcile their requirements for our park. i would like to report back to you in our january meeting when we have the park finished or the design almost finished, and we will have a new cost estimate by then. it is too early right now. commissioner katz: i did not want to hold you to anything specifically. have we contemplated, if there are any significant delays, the impact if it is not completed in time for use by the america's cup event authority? >> that is a good question. i think it is for the event authority to answer that question. we have assumed confidently that

of the $8.1 billion, $6.4 billion is for fema. this funding will meet the federal commitment to restore impacted areas after hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, and severe snowstorms. almost every state and territory will receive a portion of this funding. with the adoption of this bill, families and businesses will receive the funding they need for vital recovery and rebuilding efforts. the bill also provides $1.7 billion to repair damage to the corps of engineers' facilities. roughly equal to the need identified by the corps within presidentially declared disaster areas. nearly every year since 1997, the congress has recognized the need to provide funding to respond to natural disasters. this bill recognizes that responsibility. i urge strong support of this legislation. and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from washington reserves. the gentleman from kentucky is recognized. mr. rogers: mr. speaker, i yield three minutes to the distinguished chairman of the financial services subcommittee on