John Shimkus Quotes

In an era when information can be sent instantaneously anywhere, it is utterly nonsensical that our Nation's police, the fire, and EMS personnel cannot consistently communicate with each other.

Radio interoperability is essential for our police, fire, and emergency medical service departments to communicate with each other in times of emergency.

In terms of responders to a national disaster those first responders must be able to talk to each other…. They are still not able to do so.

So, all during the '90s and, you know, for the first half of this decade, we had opportunities to get evacuation plans in place, better communications in place.

One of the essential elements of government responsibility is to communicate effectively to the American people, especially in time of a potential terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

As everyone in Louisiana knows, there was often no communication or coordination between the state and federal government in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

If you have a sudden emergency, earthquake, hurricane, you name it, we want to be able to have a National Guard officer able to command federal forces.

NASA trains you to assess emergency situations and react in a way to keep yourself and everyone else safe.

While Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the dangers of failing to evacuate hospitals from the path of a storm, Hurricane Gustav demonstrated that moving thousands of sick people has its own risks. Gustav also highlighted a critical vulnerability of American hospitals - an inability to withstand prolonged blackouts.

There are several very good websites which describe the details of preparedness planning for citizens.

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected.

I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis?

Part of the redesign of FEMA is that they have so many people on standby, whether it is a retired nurse or a doctor who will take time off to go exactly where they are needed.

If there's one organization in the United States that could work on its communication skills, it's the military.

Having worked in disasters, I have seen that, in those critical first few hours, those first few days - so much ends up riding on you and your neighbor and whoever is around. The official response always comes later, and it always feels like it comes too slow.

If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it's the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina, from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.

Connecticut's first responders and defense workers work every day to help us achieve these goals.

Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?

For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event.

City government can and must help San Franciscans prepare for emergencies in order to avoid tragedy where possible and minimize loss of life and property when emergencies occur.

During a large disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, warnings get hopelessly jumbled. The truth is that, for warnings to work, it's not enough for them to be delivered. They must also overcome that human tendency to pause; they must trigger a series of effective actions, mobilizing the informal networks that we depend on in a crisis.

The availability of reliable and redundant communications is critical for our public safety.

In a disaster you have to have speed. In order to have speed, you have to have trust. And in order to have trust, you have to have people organized and planning before the disaster.

Assure personal survival in any kind of disaster.