Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Issue link: http://dysoncollege.uberflip.com/i/128987
communities around the country. When a fire strikes or when weather knocks down the barn, neighbors normally come in and try to make it right as soon as possible. They work from a common plan: they share their tools, they eat and they pray at the same table, and soon the family's back on its feet, and that important piece of infrastructure—family infrastructure, economic infrastructure—is in service again. When you think about it, the grid itself is operated by a kind of community arrangement. Back in the day, when all electric companies were being set up, mostly to operate street-car lines, neighboring companies learned that they could buy, sell, and share electricity, reroute it as necessary, optimize generation assets, and, of course, cover emergencies by creating joint administrative grids. Now, we know the whole nation is covered by several huge interstate electrical grids, all serving pretty much the same purposes as they were when they were first built. It's been alluded to in the discussion and bears repeating: barns and poles and grids are not resilient, but people are. And the same principles of community, common interest, and shared tools, and technology drive all three of these arrangements. And note they are all private. Now, regulation may be involved—safety, environmental, economic—and that is appropriate, but none of these successful ways to handle an emergency public need were mandated by government or sustained by government grants. But it must be cheered, encouraged, and nurtured by government. And where possible, and FEMA is doing a great job with this, and I'll allude to this later on, facilitated and enhanced by a collaboration with government just as the Commission is doing in New York. Unfortunately, as many of us in this room know, when emergencies used to strike, the bugle call used to be, "Quick! Fire! Gather your neighbors!" Sometimes, today, it is "Gather the lawyers, gather the members of Congress, and gather the policy police!" It is in my view, and I think it's shared by all of you in this room, hopefully, that the surest way we can improve our disaster readiness and keep our citizens safe, our communities resilient, and our economy moving forward, is through the public-private sector partnerships that have been discussed all morning long. I think we all understood that after 9/11, as a country, not just as a government, disaster preparedness] is a societal challenge and I think that's very appropriate. It's everybody's challenge. After 9/11 we learned we should do things differently. We certainly needed to do things better. I've always thought while homeland security may have been a federal agency or Cabinet position, it's really a national mission. Everybody's got a role to play, and it is the work of a nation. That work extends from the federal government, reaches well into our communities, public sector, private sector, academic community—and before a disaster even occurs. The very premise of a national mission involves an understanding that everything we do must be a shared effort, must be a shared responsibility. Now, when we first set up the Department in 2003, it required not only that we look at how agencies worked across the federal government, but also how we could work better with our state and local authorities, the private sector, and the academic community. We certainly had to redefine the work we did together. However, we had to try to let go of the turf battles. There was a pervasive lack of communication and, as speakers have alluded to earlier, you need that situational awareness. You need to have current and timely information you can act upon. And, as everybody said, you do not want to 11