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White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 10/23/07 (California Wildfires)
— Tuesday, October 23, 2007 — Q Dana, the aggressive response to the fires, how much of that is done sort of with lessons learned from Katrina? MS. PERINO: Well, I think that there were lessons learned from Katrina, especially in regards to early communication and coordination between the federal, state, and local governments. Obviously, the situation is different. When you have a hurricane, there are days when you can prepare and prepare for evacuation. These fires can spark up overnight and literally your house is going up in smoke. And so that's why the President declared the emergency so that we can help people get to a place where they can be safe. Clearly, when they're talking about increased coordination that means that you can get assets like those DOD assets and the U.S. Department of Agriculture assets, the Department of Interior assets to that region quickly. And I would say that the state and federal -- I'm sorry, the state and local governments are working quite well together, as well, which is why we've had a good coordinated response. It's a very dangerous situation. You have over 300,000 people evacuated, and the President is very concerned for not only their safety, but for how we are going to help them afterwards. Q Well, when you send Secretary Chertoff out or Director Paulison or you take a minute to show us 280,000 bottles of water, is that designed to make sure folks know that the administration won't repeat its own mistakes? MS. PERINO: I would say that it's not designed to do anything for me to show you that; it's to alert people to what the federal government is doing in order to help the people of southern California. The whole world is watching how much of the state -- the southern part of the state is on fire. The federal government is very concerned, the President is concerned himself, and that's why we're providing these assets. We did provide assets at Katrina. But there were lessons learned out of Katrina and I think that we are applying some of those, especially when it comes to early communication, early and often communication between our staff here at the federal level and then the Governor's staff and the Mayor's staff. Q Is the President going to go out? MS. PERINO: We don't have anything to announce in terms of the President going out. Right now it would be premature to announce because of the situation on the ground requiring so much of the security assets to be put towards helping people get out of harm's way, or to fight -- actually fight the fires. And so we are going to continue to update the President. He'll get a briefing tonight from Secretaries Chertoff and -- I'm sorry, Secretary Chertoff and Administrator Paulison. And then if we have more to update you on when -- whether he might go, we'll let you know. Q And as far as he knows right now, is everything going as well as it could be going? I've seen a couple of wire reports that at the -- center they were asking for water and other things, donations. MS. PERINO: Well, I think that -- again, being such an emergency where you have so many people needing to be in one place immediately, obviously they would need a lot of support; not only bottles of water, but cots, diapers, baby formula. People have had to leave immediately. Governor Schwarzenegger did tell the President he felt he was getting what he needed, but the President said, you've got an open line of communication, and if you need more, you just have to let us know. California | Dana Perino | Department of Homeland Security | Katrina | Michael Chertoff | Natural Disasters | Press Briefing | White House Press Corps Labels: California, Dana Perino, Department of Homeland Security, Katrina, Michael Chertoff, Natural Disasters, Press Briefing, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 7:48 PM
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