Leroy Chiao Quotes

We held the team together for as long as possible and then sent all except the most critical personnel home.

I was a rust repairer. I was a rust repairer and full-time survivor. I survived all the major earthquakes, and the Titanic, and several air crash.

Governments in countries across the world have a duty to do everything possible to keep the public safe from terrorist attacks.

The real challenge of being a flight attendant is getting people out. The training requires that they demonstrate they can evacuate an aircraft within 90 seconds, but of course, a lot of stuff that is easy to do in training turns out to be tough in practice.

Within minutes of the attack, your Department of Public Safety mobilized its Operations Center, headed by a national expert on weapons of mass destruction.

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.

I want to assure your excellency that I am occupying myself permanently and jointly with my team to achieve a solution as soon as possible to this crisis, the principal objective being the safeguarding of the health and life of those who are inside.

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.

And how the government communicates about homeland security is central to how the public responds.

Sometimes a malfunctioning test setup actually gives the tested system a chance to show what it can do in an unrehearsed emergency. During a test of an Apollo escape system in the 1960s, the escape system successfully got the capsule clear of a malfunctioning test rocket.

'Boldface' is a pilot term, a magic word to describe the procedures that could, in a crisis, save your life. We say that 'boldface is written in blood' because often it's created in response to an accident investigation. It highlights the series of steps that should have been taken to avoid a fatal crash, but weren't.

Before Katrina, it was a longstanding tradition in our country for political officials to wait until the last minute to warn, to take action, to evacuate. No more. With Irene, you had mass evacuations - mandatory ones - issued days ahead of time. That was the right thing to do.

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.

If national safety - the ability to respond to hurricanes, terrorist attacks, earthquakes - depends on the execution of explicit plans, on soldierly obedience, and on showy security drills, then a decentralized security scheme is useless.

The safety of the people is the first and foremost responsibility of government… We are not as prepared as we should be with our public safety network…. The margin for error is exceedingly and uniquely low.

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.

Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self-defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinated to that.

Assure personal survival in any kind of disaster.

We've got a rattlesnake by the tail, and the sooner we pound its damn head in the better.

The nation’s disaster mechanisms do not seem to be in the hands of those who know how to use them.

Fire management resembles public health. There is ample money and will for response when the crisis is at hand, But little for the patient labor of prevention, vaccinations, and general wellness. Worse the costs of emergencies is stripping away all resources for everything else.

Responding to a natural disaster is a complex problem.

Government's first duty and highest obligation is public safety.