Press Gaggle by Dana Perino and FEMA Administrator Dave Paulison

Business Wire, Sept 1, 2008

Aboard Air Force One

En Route Austin, Texas

AUSTIN, Texas -- 9:34 A.M. EDT

MS. PERINO: Okay, we're on our way to Austin, Texas. I'm going to just give you a little bit about the schedule, and then turn it over to Dave Paulison, the Director of FEMA, to give you a little bit more about the day and answer your questions on that. And then I can follow up on other topics or other questions that you might have.

The President, when we arrive at 10:45 a.m., he'll participate in a briefing at what's called the Texas Emergency Operations Center. It's in Austin. Pool at the top. The center has federal, state and local government officials that work together to coordinate interagency operations at the state level to support preparation and response activities. Those of you following the storm know that the path of the storm will track right through Texas.

Then at 11:20 a.m., he will greet Texas Emergency Operations Center employees. And at 12:45 p.m., we will then move on to San Antonio, Texas, where he'll be at the Alamo Regional Command Reception Center. This is an evacuation center. It's also a staging area for the distribution of commodities and supplies to areas affected by the storm. So they stage there, get everything ready, and then be able to swoop in once the winds die down and it's safe to be there. The President will be visiting with first responders and volunteers at a Salvation Army mobile hospital unit, and it's also called Building 1537, Dining Hall, where commodities and supplies are being staged. And then he will return to the White House tonight at 5:45 p.m.

I'll turn it over to Dave.

ADMINISTRATOR PAULISON: We had an opportunity to brief the President yesterday in our operations center that we built since Hurricane Katrina. And it's really become the hub of the whole focus of these disasters. We have several video conferences every day, bringing people on, that everyone who is going to have a piece inside of a disaster. It's unprecedented cooperation among all the federal agencies -- the Department of Defense, all the private sector, people like the Red Cross who are going to play. And what it allows us to do is share information with what's going on so we don't end up with what happened in Katrina, with different agencies doing things and others not knowing what's happening.

The second piece we did was change the philosophy of how we're going to respond to disaster. During Katrina you noticed that buses didn't come in until after the storm hit landfall; urban search and rescue teams didn't come until after landfall; ambulances didn't come until after landfall. All of these things are put in place ahead of the storm this time. Hundreds of buses, hundreds of ambulances, dozens of urban search and rescue teams -- all of the supplies are prepositioned, all the personnel were already down there waiting for the storm to hit.

That made a difference in the evacuation process. This was one of the most successful and most well coordinated evacuations that I've seen. The state is reporting over 2 million people evacuated out of southern Louisiana, and it went very well. Just last night, we transported over 7,000 people by air. We had 337 critical care patients transported by military aircraft; 247 by Texas Air National Guard -- helped us transport all these critical care people out of Louisiana to safe harbor.

And we also transported almost 4,000 people by train directly from New Orleans into Memphis. We have about 45,000 people in shelters, as opposed to 140,000 we had after Katrina. So a lot of people understood what they had to do. They got in their cars, they got out of town, and we only had to shelter about 45,000 people. We were prepared to shelter the 100,000 we thought we were going to have. So when you go into some of these shelters, they won't be packed out. As we go into Texas, we didn't have to transport as many people as we thought. These are all good things.

So right now we've got people in shelters, people have evacuated the city. We're waiting for the storm to pass. The National Guard, Coast Guard, Urban Search and Rescue teams are surrounding the city, ready to move back in as soon as the winds die down. So we're poised and ready to respond. And hopefully -- hopefully -- not too many people failed to evacuate. We sure gave everybody an opportunity to do that. There was no reason to stay in the city, and no excuses not to evacuate. There was plenty of transportation, and in fact, the last train we sent out was, out of a capacity of 1,000 people, only had 140 people on board because there was nobody else left to get on. So that was a good thing.

That's kind of where we are. We have the supplies there, and as soon as the winds die down we'll move into the city, see if there's anybody to rescue. If things are stable, we'll start moving people back in.

MS. PERINO: I forgot to mention that the President, upon takeoff, received about an hour's long briefing by Director Paulison, and then two other people who are on board with him today: Ken Wainstein, who's the President's Director of the Homeland Security Council. And also on board with us is Gail McGovern. She's the President and CEO of the American Red Cross. And she'll be touring these sites with the President today.