Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoffis an American attorney who was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security under Presidents George W. Bush andBarack Obama, and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as Assistant U.S. Attorney General. He succeeded Tom Ridge as United States Secretary of Homeland Security on February 15, 2005...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth28 November 1953
CountryUnited States of America
Katrina was a crash course in things that worked well and didn't work well.
By all measures, Hurricane Katrina was the largest natural disaster that FEMA has ever been called upon to support, ... Although FEMA pre-positioned significant numbers of personnel, assets and resources before the hurricane made landfall, we now know its capabilities were simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of this storm.
Just two weeks out from Hurricane Katrina, improvements in communication and coordination between levels of government were already evident, ... But that is only one step in ensuring that we identify the lessons learned from Katrina and make the necessary adjustments.
The devastation and tragic loss of life caused by Hurricane Katrina earlier this week reinforce the urgency of our coalition's work,
As you know, the president has established the 'White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina,
He has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to the unprecedented challenge posed by Hurricane Katrina and the New Orleans levee breach,
Our role is not to repair the dikes. Our role is to step in if something happens.
The second is there are some communities that we thought originally would take mobile homes that have decided they don't want them. And we're not going to cram mobile homes down the throats of communities in Louisiana and the Gulf - and other parts of the Gulf Coast.
I'm not going to judge others, ... I did not have a problem dealing with state and local officials.
The whole point of this program is let people decide the fate of their own lives, ... And I think that avoids the whole issue of someone coming from outside and saying, 'You must do this' or 'You must do that.'
If there are contracts that turn out to be not properly cost effective or inappropriate in some other way, we can redo the contracts; we can renegotiate those contracts,
I want to have the people who are present here on the ground
The tenor of his discussions on Monday . . . was, this was bad, but it could have been worse, ... There was not a report to me until the following morning that there was a significant breach of the 17th Street levee.
Get yourself into that command center in Baton Rouge!