Steve King Quotes

The other big lesson from Katrina is that it pays to be prepared. But it's also very difficult to stay prepared because the longer you go between events the more you'll see complacency.

This is the United States of America. It means we respond to our fellow Americans in times of crisis and emergency and disaster.

But I think the bottom line right now is to take the constructive criticism and use that to build toward, as I say, the hurricane season that is 100 days away. And we don't have a lot of time to waste before we start to address that next set of challenges.

And at that point, I think we all realized it was something tremendously tragic, probably a terrorist attack, and the next step was to go down to our command center and get things going.

It's especially important since September 11 for people to be trained for the unexpected. We want to try to make sure people are safe.

Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.

If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it's the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.

We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn't have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.

My father did a lot of disaster relief work, and he was always in places where there was a lot of pain.

For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event.

The safety of the people is the first and foremost responsibility of government… We are not as prepared as we should be with our public safety network…. The margin for error is exceedingly and uniquely low.

There is no question that FEMA and the National Emergency Response System did not fail America the day that Katrina hit. They failed the day before and the days before that.

Anything you say before a pandemic occurs sounds alarmist; anything you say after it occurs is inadequate.

Whenever there is an international crisis - an earthquake, a flood, a war - Americans provide more assistance than the people of any other nation.

In life, you don't really know what's coming at you. Like a firefighter, or police officer, or anyone else working in the emergency field, they don't know what's going to come at them. You gotta be ready for anything.

We need to act and act now to get people out of harm's way.

How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

After the tsunami in Japan, we were open for business. In fact, I flew there 10 days after the tsunami to show our support for the Japanese people.

I have little compassion for people in trailer parks who refuse to move after getting tornado warnings. How hard is it for them to relocate? Their houses have wheels.

FEMA has lost its focus, and Floridians know first-hand of the agency's shortcomings, .. Natural disaster preparedness and response programs have become trapped in a homeland security bureaucracy.

They seem to be getting it together. How much damage will the picture of people spending four or five days on rooftops do That depends on how well it goes from here on out.

When there is a crisis, that's when some are interested in getting out and that's when we are interested in getting in.

Disaster management should be coordinated by the federal government, .. It is our exact responsibility.

I have put together resources from the private and philanthropic communities to help provide a bridge because you've got to get the federal money. You've got to get the state money, but I'm going to do everything I can. And I will be with Flint all the way through this crisis in whatever capacity I am.

Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.