Incidents like power outages, industrial fires, and hazardous require apills will president ial disaster declaration and will attract worldwide attention to a state. How a governor addresses a crisis, be at large or small, is critical and will have tremendous implications for the citizens of their states and the future of their governorship. Keep yourselves safe and use common sense. Were dealing with unprecedented circumstances here. We are talking six or seven feet of snow and 14 days. Waters are going to continue to rise in many areas. This is no time to let your guard down. With this unprecedented snowfall, weve been moving aggressively to access resources from around the region to support our cities and towns. Again, i ask that everyone who is able please help out. The immediate need is to restore calm and peace in the city, make people feel safe. As your governor, i call on each of us as oregonians and as , and gun violence now. Im extremely encouraged by the amount of cooperation we have gotten from people. Executives, governments take their responsibilities seriously in times of relative stability and in times of crisis. Nga is a key resource that can help governments and their teams repair to weather the day today and be extraordinary. That is a helpful reminder of all of our responsibilities, and is certainly reminded me of some governors who have done extraordinary work and provided incredible leadership during times of crisis. As chair of the ngas Homeland Security security and Public Safety committee, im honored to share todays session, preparing resilient communities. Our Committee Vice chair, Governor Brown of oregon, could not be with us today, but we are honored to have my good friend, governor john bel edwards, to fill in for her. Governor, welcome. He is my neighbor. He is a great colleague, despite a few aggravations in sec sports. Thank you for joining us today, and we have an agenda, so we will get to it. We have, as will be introduced shortly, the director of fema 100michael berkowitz from resilient cities. As you can see from the video, virtually every state gets hit at one time or another by a catastrophe or natural disaster. In arkansas, we have most recently had flooding. If missouri would just contain a lotwater, we would be better off. 44 counties work designated as federal disaster areas, most recently in arkansas, as a result of the flooding problems. I did want to mention any time you had a natural disaster, emergency communication is one. F the critical areas i understand the importance of want to remind governors we have 90 days after the submission of the plan from first to either opt in or opt out. I made the decision and announced it this week that we opted in for the first Net Initiative representing arkansas. It comesned that when to our flooding in arkansas, the followup is just as critical. I want to express my appreciation to fema for their early work and assessments making the judgments as to what qualifies and the assistance that is provided, but i am following up with our levee system. Levees can be operated by our core of injured airs. They can be privately or publicly operated, and the coordination that levee system, if it is not coordinated well flooding. O even more fema willope today educate us on all of this as well as our other speaker, and i know we will have a good dialogue with everyone as they ask questions. Governor edwards, i know you will have some things to add, and i welcome you as you introduce these speakers as well. Governor edwards thank you, governor hutchinson. Asm probably not as pretty the governor from oregon, but i will do the best i can. In louisiana, we had and challenged a lot and often. You all know about hurricane katrina. Certainly, that was the biggest single challenge, but we have been challenged many times in the last year. We have more experience than we would like in this area. What weve learned is you cannot wait for the federal government, even though you want to have a good partnership, and we have been able to achieve good partnerships, you simply cannot wait for them to provide the answers to the challenges associated with severe flooding, but relationships do matter, and governors to get to know personally their federal coordinating officer at fema, the regional administrator, and certainly, administrator brock long. Since i took office in 2016, louisiana has received four , and 57 ofclarations our parishes have been declared disaster areas, mostly from flooding. Currently, i can tell you , which isglaring gap in temporaryg inessential power was essential by creating a program that actually does not fit within the confines of the stafford act and subsequent federal regulations. The state, working with the step guidelines, developed the. Helter at home program the Program Provides minimal repairs, temporary repairs safely to make a home habitable, safe, and secure so that you do not have entire communities who are depopulating, which is something we did experience with hurricane katrina. Theter at home purchased state and resident resiliency. The home did not suffer from old and infestation and become otherwise abandoned it on, so they were able to return home. We have continued to work with fema and worked to make it permanent. Cane make it permanent, you have contracts before disasters hit, and you can negotiate those contracts and get a better price, and that saves time, effort, and energy after the storm when you have to sit down with fema to negotiate the parameters of the program and request forto proposals and receive bids and award the contract. You would be able to get to that much faster. Know administrator long is working on this, but manufacturing housing units, where they are available in date , that they be able to that states be able to purchase and inn be reimbursed from fema accordance with strict guidelines. We have lots of challenges around resiliency in a state that suffers from coastal erosion, and we need more resources, so resiliency is a. Uge issue for us im going to stop here because i know we have to get to our guest, and im going to introduce, and we are very proud to have with us today administrator brock long, who is the administrator of fema. We know you have a hard stop at noon, so i want to make sure the other old here know that as well. And then michael berkowitz, president of 100 resilient cities. Both of you in the state of louisiana and your agencies, your entities, have made a tremendous difference for my citizens, so i want to thank you very much for that and thank you for being here, and the program is now yours. Governors. Hank you, it is truly an honor to be here. It is an honor to serve the nation in this capacity. Im a diplomat by nature, and one thing you will get from the is working through the issues. I want to organize fema in a way that helps you achieve your repaired this and recovery goals preparedness and recovery goals. I believe we fail together, and we cannot afford for that to happen, so we have to design programs in a manner that does increase resiliency. Is incredibly active. Even though we are not in the news much right now, were actually working 24 different disasters. To expedite this because we should render a quick decision as fast as we can to let you know what type of assistance is available. Regarding resilience, what scares me the most is i do not believe we built a true culture within ourness citizens. I believe we have what i call hazard amnesia. We have had some bad disasters sandy, matthew, flooding but one of the things that keeps me up at night is this nation has not seen the devastation of a major land falling hurricane since 2005. We have notthink seen the worst. I go to sleep with that every night. Fema cannot do this alone. With yourartner state. I have to understand the gaps in each of you faces and how we can meet in the middle, how we can help you to overcome those gaps or how we maximize disaster. Ecovery ending funding what i do not want to do is come to your state, set up joint field offices, spent a lot of money, and repeat the cycle over and over again. Hopefully, the experience is positive and we leave you better and stronger for the next time we have to face it. Achieving resiliency is a partnership. I look at resiliency in two different hots. There is the citizen, and there is the Public Infrastructure side. Public infrastructure side, it is amazing to me to on average puts out about 8 billion a year in Recovery Funding to rebuild after the disaster. How do we get that money up front . How do we put that money up front is the question i ask, so there was a period between 2011 report4 where a gao found that fema put out 3. 2 billion in post Disaster Mitigation funding in that threeyear period. During the same timeframe, we were able to cough up 222 million on the predisaster side. It is flipflopped. It should be backwards. I do believe that preDisaster Mitigation is the key to reducing future disaster cost. Lets invest now, and lets put it forward. Be fema funding alone. It has to be a priority in state as well as local budgets. Having served as a cabinet director for the alabama Emergency Management agency, i on stated the demands budgets. I understand that is hard. I get that, but i do believe we have to focus on the predisaster. I need your help helping us understand how to navigate that. It will require the help of congress to be able to move some of that to the front side. Citizens, as io said earlier, im not sure our be ready programs have hit the mark. Something very sensitive and something to talk about is i believe asset poverty not poverty, asset poverty, your ability to put your hand on cash Many Americans cannot do it. Many of our campaigns are saying go out, be ready, by all these supplies for the next three days. That is important, but it may be unrealistic in many communities, and we have to rethink that and form different partnerships with department of education and others train people to have their own Rainy Day Fund. The other thing we have to look at is we call our citizens disaster victims. We call them disaster survivors. I look at our citizens as the true first responder. Is notity of times, fema a First Response agency. We do not roll in, we are not after the disaster. It takes time for us to come into place, and theres a whole process that takes place. If you look at cyber attacks, if you look at active shooter in alabama after a tornado hits, your neighbor was likely the first one to do search and rescue. So we have to think about the way we train our citizens and refocus these programs to give them lifesaving skills. Cpr. Back to how to shut off the water valves to your homes. How can they do simple search and rescue. I think we have to take a comprehensive look at what we are asking citizens to do but empower them to be part of that response, get them included in our Training Exercise as well. In closing, im going to keep it there. Governor edwards hit the nail on the head. We had so much capability that we can bring down. It is my job to coordinate the federal government down through you governors ultimately to the entity command level. We only have so much we can bring to the table. Example, theres only so many manufactured homes available right now, and it takes a certain amount of time to get many of them build, so how to we do things smarter from the standpoint of how we make sure we implement proper rapid , how do we keep people in their homes without having to bring temporary housing onto those locations. Are we maximizing economy sharing platforms such as airbnb . If you can rent them, that is the best thing to do in many cases. When the rural areas are hit, the only option is a manufactured home, and i get that, but i believe it is my to give guidance. I believe you guys can control your own destiny a little bit more by setting up the right contracts, if its hiring terms to help you navigate Disaster Recovery cost, or setting up your own vendor management logistics systems, there have to be private companies that do water every day in your states, signing demo yous signing withu signing mous them so you are rolling forward the first 24, 48 hours until i can backfill the system on logistics and let me reimburse hours hat first 4800 48, 100 hours. We have to clearly say here are some of the things you can do is no cost retainer contracts until they are turned on to be a little more prepared and to help the system as we go forward. Im going to stop there. One more thing recovery is fragmented. It is incredibly fragmented in this country. There are studies where everyone is saying reduce the disaster cost, which i believe we can do that, and a lot of that is by reducing complexity. Theres over 200 different policies that guide fema alone, and it is tough for local governments to keep up with all of that. The other thing is that fema is not the only one providing hunting. There are numerous funds out there. Theres Economic Injury loans. Theres the army corps of engineers. One of the big data systems that help governors understand how to formulate their recovery goals and maximize all that funding to do the greatest good when it comes down and becomes available i dont think as a nation we have actually come together to do that, and i want to help. I want to figure out. Ive got to stretch across our federal partners to figure out how we work in concert with one another but also say, governor hutchinson, based on this disaster you had and the impacts you are experiencing, heres the best way we would encourage you to help, but i dont know how arkansas should be covered better than you. But weve got to be able to figure out how to use that funding now, so i will stop there. Thank you. Berkowitz thank you, governor hutchinson, governor edwards. Im michael berkowitz, president of 100 resilient cities. We are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation to build urban resilience in 100 cities around the world. We actually have 100 cities in 48 countries across six continents, so i greatly appreciate the ability to take a train a couple of hours here. The travel is certainly better. Like the administrator, im here to talk about flooding and flood resilience. While conventional responses like hard infrastructure and Emergency Response are important, to limit flood impacts, those alone are not enough. Instead, im here to advocate for a more powerful and costeffective approach that improves the lives of City Residents long before disaster strikes. Im here to advocate or building resilience. What do i mean when i say resilience . That is a word that gets tossed around a lot. The capacity to survive and thrive in the face of disaster. Not just think about the shock, the earthquake, hurricane, tornados. Also think about the longterm, slow burning disasters. Longterm food, water, energy shortages, high levels of crime and violence, aging infrastructure. The importance under mayors giuliani and bloomberg, and in that role, i spent a lot of the 1990s preparing and tracking hurricanes and helping the city prepare for them. Then on 9 11, two planes flew into two buildings, and the world, new york, and our country were changed forever. T came and direct attacks anthrax attacks, the plane crash in queens, and only in 2012 did hurricane sandy. New york survived and thrived through those incidents. It is worth pointing out that this week marks the 40th the 1977 blackout in new york city. In july 1977,ts and the city was impacted by next several days afterward, and you contrast that with what happened in 2003 and understand how it is not just Emergency Response and infrastructure that determines if a city, state, or country can survive, but rather, it is a much broader approach. These underscore an important insight that infrastructure and Emergency Response are important, but its also critical to focus on robust,. Iversified economies the same lesson can be drawn from hurricane katrina, which killed nearly 2000 people, displaced hundreds of thousands nearlyicans, and cost 150 billion dollars. You understand what went wrong, its not enough to look at how warm the gulf was, what the state of the infrastructure was, how big the storm was. Those are important, but you also need to consider the local economy, transportation systems, public health, political leadership, and looking at flooding in a vacuum would be to ignore those exacerbating actors. The truth is you rarely know what disaster will strike next and how it will play out. If you think you do, the chances are you are fighting the last war. Resilience mindset challenges us to look at issues in a comprehensive way, to multiple tackling problems with each investment. It is a simple approach focus strength with every intervention and become better prepared for whatever happens next. How does resilience Building Work in practice . To answer that question, im going to share three quick real world, and i will start by talking more about new york city, my hometown. New york is surrounded by water. It has nearly 700 miles of coastline alone, and rising tides and hurricanes have the potential to create leading that could cripple the city, the region, and our national economy, and a traditional response to a threat like this would be to build a seawall. We have a few visuals. Planners,ngineers and worse case scenarios, make estimates, at some buffer, and pour concrete. But there is a better and more powerful way and likely a costeffective option. Building a wall might help new york survived this particular threat, but it would fail to strengthen the city more broadly. Why not address the threat of flooding while simultaneously tackling other challenges like dwindling public space and neighborhood isolation . Following sandy, the city came up with a project that you can see here. It is a ring of infrastructure protecting Lower Manhattan that will run 10 continuous miles. It is not just a method of flood protection. Each of the sections provide Innovative Solutions to challenges facing the surrounding neighborhood. Trees and other greenery mitigate the effect of the urban heat island, which makes manhattan hotter than the surrounding areas, and new public spaces engage residents so that neighbors meet neighbors, was it something you should not take for granted in the big city. Protect new york city from flooding, but that is not all it will also strengthen the city s