We are very glad you live in the region so that even when Congress is dismissed, you are willing to travel from Prince George's to be able to offer the very, very important and helpful comments and questions you have offered this afternoon.

How would the Red Cross handle an event with so many widely dispersed people with disabilities across the region?

If the funding were available, would you be prepared to start--with the design work having been done, as I hear your testimony, would you be prepared to start in building such a decontamination facility in the District of Columbia?

One of the things I am most interested in, Ms. Mathes, is whether, in the event of an evacuation, absent some kind of event with gases so noxious that they were being released all over the District of Columbia...

we are going to pass the D.C. House Voting Rights Act. We are not letting anything stand in the way of that.

To me, section 210... it doesn't make sense.

How would you handle bus travel? Do bus drivers assume any responsibility--they are not law enforcement officers--for people carrying weapons?

Isn't that ridiculous? I mean for nonprofits only.

Are you funded to retrain all sworn officers of the Metropolitan Transit Authority?

This is perhaps--I mean, this is a tremendous deficit for one of the most significant regions in the country.

The, perhaps, most pathetic, most tragic part of Katrina had to do with people who could not take care of themselves, and these were patients, trauma patients who were in hospitals.

That is an important point, as well. On the other hand, it is a contamination point that I think would most interest the Federal Government.