Thank you for having this hearing. It is very important and I appreciate you doing it.

One of the things we did on our Subcommittee is that we had a hearing on social media and the impact that social media has in these events now.

Are people making plans? And if there is something going on, whether it is an earthquake or a snowstorm or whatever it happens to be and maybe the communication is not real clear in the beginning and everybody is unsure about really what…

Do you feel like the D.C. area has sufficient capacity in an emergency to keep all the lines of communication open or are we going to continue to see sort of a clogged telecom capacity here?

If we have a terrorist attack, if we have any kind of contamination, leaving the building exposes them to much higher levels of contamination and of unsafe situations than staying in place.

We understand that it is a time to also look at efficiencies and try to make sure that we eliminate any inefficiencies.

There is a huge risk in not being prepared.

I would like to start today by recognizing that today's hearing coincides with the 70th anniversary of the surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor.

The reason I was asking is we talked a minute ago, one of the witnesses talked about sort of a phased leaving of the city or coming into the city or whatever effort during or after an event.

We also need to keep our eye on the larger ball of preparedness around the Nation.

This area is absolutely critical to keeping things going around the country and around the world as we need them to.