James Carville Quotes

After the tsunami in Japan, we were open for business. In fact, I flew there 10 days after the tsunami to show our support for the Japanese people.

When you are pulling people out of the water and off of rooftops, there are no Republicans and no Democrats.

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.

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?

I can only hope the federal aid made available today will be sufficient in our recovery efforts, and pray that our citizens continue to be safe from the fallout of this dangerous natural disaster.

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.

Negative publicity makes people forget your best times.

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.

A disaster like a hurricane is like a football game. You are going to lose the first quarter. There is no way you will win that quarter. The question is how ugly you will lose that quarter. Then you go into the second quarter – the search and rescue.

Responding to a natural disaster is a complex problem.

There are disasters that happen - Hurricane Harvey came up, and you had people self-organizing through the community and getting in boats and driving around rescuing people coordinated ad hoc through this network. That's not a media function.

During Hurricane Sandy, we expended billions and billions of dollars, literally. In the handling of the emergency and the construction and the aftermath, trying to get people to come back to the affected communities. So I'm very proud of what the state did.

When there is a crisis, how you handle the crisis is just as important as the crisis.

I'm kind of the crisis communications person at 'SNL.' If there are fires to put out, they try and find me.

You saw on your TV what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The Reserves or National Guard are usually the people we use for those national emergencies. They weren't here, they were over in Iraq, and so we were less protected.

We need to act and act now to get people out of harm's way.

There were tactical decisions that I wish I could have done differently: mission accomplished, not revealing my drunken driving charge prior to my run for the presidency, flying over New Orleans on Katrina and the pictures being released and people saying, "he's aloof and doesn't really care."

What we have is a great number of people working extremely hard to make sure that death number stays where it is and the people that have to go to shelters are taken care of tonight and for as many days as it takes and that we support our first responders that are out there keeping security.

When you have the worst disaster in American history, you've got to be attuned to expectations,.

I have little compassion for people in trailer parks who refuse to move after getting tornado warnings. How hard is it for them to relocate? Their houses have wheels.

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.

You could reduce people's fears if you gave them some useful information before things went wrong. It's really important to create a sense of confidence in the public in their own abilities before a disaster because they're the only ones who are going to be there. No one's going to help you for at least 24 to 72 hours. So it would be good to know more about it.

The outpouring of support from health professionals who want to volunteer for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts has been tremendous.

This quake, tsunami and the nuclear accident are the biggest crises for Japan [in decades] ... We will continue to handle it in a state of maximum alert.