Richard E. Besser Quotes

I think we're in good shape, but the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina is in some small way mitigated by the fact that we now have more people talking about it, thinking about it and working on it, so that we will be more vigilant and ready.

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 cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.

There is no question that FEMA and the National Emergency Response System did not fail America the day that Katrina hit. They failed the day before and the days before that.

Anything you say before a pandemic occurs sounds alarmist; anything you say after it occurs is inadequate.

What we found out with Katrina is that the country is still unable to deal with disaster. God forbid this happens in San Francisco.

FEMA has lost its focus, and Floridians know first-hand of the agency's shortcomings, .. Natural disaster preparedness and response programs have become trapped in a homeland security bureaucracy.

Soon after a disaster passes, we tend to turn our eyes away and focus our resources on the day-to-day, rather than on preparing for the rare, but foreseeable and potentially catastrophic disaster. It's another form of triage, how much we invest in preparing for that, a very important question for public policy. We are a short-sighted species.

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.

Events like Hurricane Katrina and the Minnesota bridge collapse suggest a national infrastructure that has suffered from lack of tending.

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.

It is vital that the entire international system is ready to meet the challenges of future disasters.

But I think the bottom line right now is to take the constructive criticism and use that to build toward, as I say, the hurricane season that is 100 days away. And we don't have a lot of time to waste before we start to address that next set of challenges.

I have noticed a marked improvement in FEMA and with the coordination of FEMA and the State agencies.

I think the idea that you would do everything you can to prevent what is coming at you by way of something very disruptive - a 9/11 - it's a no-brainer.

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?

One of the things government should be around for is to deal with catastrophes. It should do that well. To me, that's a government function, and we shouldn't be playing political games with it.

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.

The best way to get a sense of what kinds of emergencies might present themselves in your community is by contacting local chapters of the American Red Cross or offices of emergency management in the region or state. Most large cities will have their own offices of emergency management.

The preparations are what they are. We're here. The storm is coming. We are as best prepared as we can be as the eye of the storm approaches.

We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur .

To prepare for a disaster, practice the worst case scenario. We don’t usually do that.

You can’t prepare for the best case; you have to prepare for the worst case.

Responding to a natural disaster is a complex problem.

The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address.