reference that they are trying-and I'm putting that in my quotes, not yours-"to coordinate with local officials."

In all I've heard, it would seem to me that with the exception of a Federal crime, which, as you mentioned, terrorism and a crime go hand in hand, they are inextricably tied. With the exception of DOJ's authority, if it was not in the violation of a Federal law, it seems like we should designate the local governing authority, in which such an incident takes place, as the person in charge and everybody else should be an assistance role. Would you agree with that or disagree with that?

Ms. SIMANK. Now, are you speaking of in charge of the criminal investigation?

Mr. ISAKSON. No, I'm speaking of in charge of handling the response to the tragedy.

Ms. SIMANK. Yes, absolutely.

Mr. ISAKSON. It would seem to me, from what I'm hearing, that's the case. Having thought about something I want to ask the chief in just a second, it's a pretty obvious example. If that is the case; and if the NDPOS would institutionalize their local advisory groups in each State, it would seem like then that it would be a very easy chain of command if the authority was vested in the local elected authority where the jurisdiction where the tragedy took place. Their request for assistance would go through the State advisory group to the NDPO, which may be the State emergency management office. The role of the Federal Government would be to provide those services that are needed for that tragedy, rather than come down and try and provide authority over something they probably know little about. They know a lot about the tragedy but not about the locals. Would that seem to you to work pretty well? Ms. SIMANK. Well, sir, I don't know. You may open up another area when you put authority with the State, getting on out to the local, the city. For you see, Oklahoma City experienced problems. I'll just be quite frank with you. We experienced problems with our State emergency management people.

Mr. ISAKSON. Not to interrupt, I maybe misstated, but my thought process let's assume for a second the local elected jurispolitical, jurisdictional body is in charge. Their request for assistance goes through the advisory group that y'all commend in the National League of Cities to the NDPO, and the NDPO's job is to deliver, not question whether or not it's needed.

Ms. SIMANK. It sounds like that might work.

Mr. ISAKSON. OK. For the chief, I have to say I know you're aware of this,but it gives me a chance to acknowledge again, in Atlanta about 2 months ago, we had a firefighter who reacted to, not a terrorist act, but to a crane operator suspended 250 feet in the air over a cotton mill that was a total inferno. He hung from, I think it was, about an 80-foot rope below a helicopter in a 30mile wind and plucked him out and saved his life. I commend all firefighters and you and what you do for our citizens every day.

You're right, that guy was picked up, loves the big red truck, and I'm sure glad the Federal Government wasn't in charge of that operation. Nonetheless, going back to the question that I asked here, do you think or isn't it true that as far as your constituency in Chicago is concerned, the buck does stop with you in one of these trag

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edies? They don't want an explanation of how many Federal agencies may be involved or many people it took? Don't they look to you for the immediate response?

Mr. EVERSOLE. Sir, that question is very easily answered, and the simple thing is this. When the State goes back to Springfield, Illinois, and the Federal people go back to wherever Federal people go back to, the fire chief, police chief, the mayor, the emergency managers all stand out on a corner and for the rest of their lives, remember that's where we leave, they are standing there answering the questions, you know, did you do a good job, did he do a good job, how did it work out.

You know, we have nowhere to escape to, and I would just tell you something that was interesting. That was the first time —and he probably hopes it's the last time that that firefighter ever has to hang from that helicopter the way he did, and those are things that we do every day in the fire service.

Every day we do I'm amazed sometimes at what my people do, and we handle chemicals. We have the University of Chicago where there's more Nobel prize winners than any facility in the world; and you know, when those doctors are running out of the building because something drastically has gone wrong, they're yelling, it's in there, Mr. Fireman, and we're going, yeah, OK, we'll get that, and we're running in the building where the expert of the world is running out, and we do that regularly, and those are the things that we have to handle.

What we're asking for is to take what we have, a system that really works, a proven system of 350 years of tradition in this country, and just make it slicker and faster, make my wheel go faster and make it last longer. That's what I need.

Mr. ISAKSON. Can I ask one other question?

Mrs. FOWLER. Yes.

Mr. ISAKSON. In your testimony, you did not discount but you certainly questioned whether or not putting more money in RAID teams made sense. In hearing your testimony, RAID, the first R in the word RAID, stands for "rapid" in that acronym; yet you're talking about 3-minute responses or less when you have disasters in Chicago. I know you probably answered this question: Has there been a demonstration yet to your knowledge of the timeliness of these RAID teams to react or the predictable timeliness of those RAID teams to react?

Mr. EVERSOLE. To the best of my knowledge, sir, there has been no demonstration of this. They're telling us they hope 4 hours they can respond anywhere in our area. We think they can get to Chicago faster than 4 hours.

I have some questions that have not been answered yet. I asked you, of 22 members on board, how many will you roll with? Oh, 22. Are you telling me that these people are going to work 7 days a week, 24 hours a day; that they will never have a day off, never be sick, never be on vacation, and there are still questions.

This is a good concept, but there are many things to be worked out yet, and I'm-you know, the proof is in the pudding, sir. Show me the job. Show me you can do the job. If you can't show me, take your garbage home.

Mr. ISAKSON. To that end, last follow-up. To that end, would you spend $7 million on more RAID teams before you'd seen a demonstration?

Mr. EVERSOLE. Would I?

Mr. ISAKSON. Yes.

Mr. EVERSOLE. Sir, I'm from a local government. Do you know what we can do with $7 million? I'll give you a RAID team that will look like Mr. Whiz's galaxy of such special items.

Mr. ISAKSON. Thanks, Chief.

Ms. SIMANK. Sir, if I might make a point on the RAID teams. I know they're promising cities and towns 4 hours. Maybe they can get to Chicago in 4 hours. I don't quite have much trust in all of that. I will tell you that we, our local fire, rescued most of the victims that survived the bombing, and that happened before 4 hours. We did find one or two alive later, but before the first team ever got to our city. By the time the first team got there, we never found another survivor.

Mr. ISAKSON. Well, I agree with you, within 4 hours y'all had had to deal with unbelievable-in Atlanta, when we had the Olympic park bombing, 4 hours would have been too late

Ms. SIMANK. Four hours is too late.

Mr. ISAKSON. -When you've got people laying and dying all over the city.

Ms. SIMANK. Four hours is too late.

Mrs. FOWLER. Thank you. I'd like now to turn to our distinguished colleague from the Government Reform Committee who really has been working so diligently in this area and paving the way. Mr. Shays, we appreciate your being here, and if you have any questions or statement, whatever, we'd

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I would just first make an observation. When I walked in the door and, Chief, you were talking, I thought you were Congressman Traficant's brother; and my second question, when I got here was I was thinking you were responding to a question, we were in 10 minutes and you hadn't taken a breath. So I'm really curious to know what the question was, but you were very effective in what you had to say, and I just would, first, before asking you a question, Chief, say that I think you know that our hearts went out to Oklahoma; and we were just very impressed with how the city dealt with this tragedy during and after, and it is nice to have you here.

Ms. SIMANK. Thank you, sir, and I do know that. Everyone in the United States of America I think felt that same way, and we appreciate that.

Mr. SHAYS. We felt like one family; we really did.

Chief, I'm interested to know if you-what kind of protective gear you have, suits, masks, for chemical exposure to protect from chemical exposure, and if you do have this equipment, did the Federal Government help you buy it?

Mr. EVERSOLE. Šir, we're using the Chemrel level A chemical suit which, as far as we're concerned, is as good as you can buy. You know, when you think of all the factors, and we use Scott Air Paks. Scott Air Paks we had. We use about 11,000 cylinders a month just in our regular business, and every firefighter on duty has his own self-contained breathing apparatus.

I don't go out the door if mine's not in my trunk, and I tell people if I have to put that sucker on and use it, you know it really got bad because I'm supposed to be back at the command post, but the government did supply us with 135 chemical protective suits to our specification, and I applaud them for that. The only problem was, under the Nunn-Lugar Act, all of that was supposed to be for training and not for actual response.

Mr. SHAYS. Interesting, interesting.

Mr. EVERSOLE. We're waiting still for the release. There's a significant appropriation that was supposed to be made, and the grant applications were supposed to be out several months ago for this year's funding. Sir, this is June, and we haven't seen them yet, and need equipment, and now we're 8 months into this year's Federal budget; is that correct?

Mr. SHAYS. Just before turning back to the floor, just this one question: Does this chemical protective gear also protect you from heat and flames as well?

Mr. EVERSOLE. No, sir, absolutely not.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mrs. FOWLER. Thank you, Congressman Shays. It's my understanding I think, Chief, that the NDPO is holding up these grants because they have had so many requests, but like you say, they need to get them on through their process and get it done; and that's another example of the problems we're having with this setup right now of how the organization is floating up and working very speedily.

I just have two last quick questions because I wanted to go to the other members. Just one to you, Chief. Are you more worried about the training and education level of our responders in a large city or in our remote towns? I know you're in a large city, but if you look at Illinois, there're a lot of small towns around there. Are you more concerned about their training and level of response, education, versus those in large cities?

Mr. EVERSOLE. I think that we need to look at something very intelligently, ma'am. When we had the bad incident in Waco, Texas, most people didn't even know where Waco, Texas, was. When they were up in Montana, who knew where that was? The Unabomber was born and raised less than 10 minutes from my home, but he was in a little cabin out in the middle of nowhere. I'm sure that McVeigh did not build that bomb in Oklahoma City. He built it in some remote place, and it is the feeling of the International Association of Fire Chiefs that every emergency responder in this country should be adequately trained. Not everybody has to be a brain surgeon or a technician here, but everybody has to be trained to an appropriate level.

We have a system in place that determines awareness, operations, technician, incident, command. We have requirements for that. We know where all that goes, and other people just sit there and say, well, we'll hire some more consultants and we'll build— the program is there, ma'am. We can turn it on tomorrow, and it's just ignored by the Federal Government.

Mrs. FOWLER. Thank you. Are there any other questions from members of the subcommittee here? I want to thank both of you. I'm a former city council member in Florida myself so I understand

you're on the front line and dealing with these every day. Again, as you know, our prayers were with everyone in Oklahoma City, and we are hoping through our efforts and those of others working on this that we can, one, avoid those types of instances in the future; and two, make sure we do the best we can to avoid what happened in your city when those groups came in 15 hours later, that we don't have repeats of that either.

And, Chief, thank you. You do an outstanding job, as every member of every fire department throughout this country does. We deeply appreciate it, and you have given us some great testimony today. You both have given us some good suggestions and good ideas, and just know we're going to persevere on this and try to get both of you the most help we can.

So thank you very much again for being with us today.
Mr. EVERSOLE. Thank you.

Mrs. FOWLER. We would like to call our next panel up. Thank you.

Mrs. FOWLER. I would like to welcome our next panel. We'll keep moving. I think we have an hour before the next set of votes. We have Ms. Catherine H. Light, director, Office of National Security Affairs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. We have the Honorable Charles L. Cragin, who is the acting assistant secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs for the Department of Defense. And Mrs. Barbara Y. Martinez, who is the deputy director of the National Domestic Preparedness Office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I think you were all here earlier, so you know we have a process of swearing in. So if you would all stand and raise your right hand. [Witnesses sworn.]

Mrs. FOWLER. Thank you. Be seated.

TESTIMONY OF CATHERINE H. LIGHT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY; HONORABLE CHARLES L. CRAGIN, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (RESERVE AFFAIRS), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; BARBARA Y. MARTINEZ, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NATIONAL DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS OFFICE, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Mrs. FOWLER. We'll start out with Ms. Light. If you could begin. Ms. LIGHT. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and members of the subcommittee. On behalf of Director James Lee Witt, thank you very much for this opportunity to discuss the status of FEMA's terrorism-related activities. As you know, we have provided a written statement; and I'll now summarize some key points from that statement.

First, I'll give an overview of FEMA's responsibilities in terrorism preparedness and response, then briefly describe FEMA's role in consequence management and discuss FEMA's programs and activities to better prepare States and local governments for dealing with terrorist incidents.

While FEMA is the Federal Government's lead agency for consequence management in response to domestic terrorist incidents involving WMD, the FBI is the lead agency for crisis management.