and you guys know that. we re still in the response phase. we still have flooding going on, we still have concerns about rising water and so, we re not past the danger, we re not past the challenge. after we re done with that the primary searches we have to do secondary searches to make sure nobody s sitting in the homes and tragically lost their lives and we need to recover the bodies for families. reporter: one more question i want to ask you about this convention center. i saw some of your police officers singing and dancing with people here making them feel better given what they lost. to be in this room with so many people who lost so much but their lives were spared and they were saved. it s a mix of emotions. it is. and i think mayor turner has talked about it a lot. people are happy, they re happy to be here, but what the mayor really wants is for all our partners in the federal state,
obviously, the reference couldn t be more clear. this is not another katrina. you said very eloquently, that was with this president had to avoid. so far, he seems to have avoided it. i think he has and i know he s getting criticized for going to texas some people say too early, some people say you shouldn t be down there. but this is such a huge storm that i don t see anything wrong at all with this president, oh whether it s a republican or democrat going to another part of texas that was impacted by hurricane harvey let s be honest, may not be that drastic but it was pretty much destroyed in corpus christi, the going to those areas is perfectly okay. it s absolutely the right decision did not go to houston yet because as he reported and everybody else has reported, this place is still in the middle of a response phase. there still levees breaking, dams that are reconvening, people still being rescued and put in shelters. i just want to say to the
experts thought? the company of resource today but you always need to be looking one or two days ahead particularly while you are in the response phase. want to emphasize again we are still in the response phase. we need to be looking maybe 72 hours ahead and start calculating how many assets you need to respond because the thing that drives me crazy about firefighters and i love firefighters, we saw them on ground zero. they are worked to the bone. but what they do as they work themselves until they re so tired but to actually become a danger to themselves and others. you have to force them to go take at least four or five hour break somewhere. that means you have to start calling and mutual aid from other states. you can rotate firefighters and first responders in as this continues to unfold over several days. i think that they will have to do that. i think the other thing that we need to watch and be careful
we re going to push hard to make sure you don t see the sunlight anytime soon. we ve got armed robbers last night in the middle of the night and we ve also got more looters. we got looters at a game stop last night. it s all hands on deck. we are fully operational, we have the resources coming out of texas from other major cities. we re beginning to task them, we are beginning to give them specific missions, they will be doing two things. first, they will be conducting security at some of our locations where we have evacuees and secondly, they will be relieving some of our officers in the near future. we will not be reducing our posture. officers continue to sleep in the stations, they will be continuing to sleep in these stations throughout the response
texas. which i trapgkly, john is the point i think week he we aukt to consider. fema is in a response mode. you have preparedness, response recovery. we re still in the response phase. we re still trying to make certain that we do everything to save live the and rescue people. that just shows the magnitude of this storm. and you ve expressed concern that harvey could end up being even more expensive than katrina. that s not what we re hearing from your experts right now. but what do you think? well, i think that s because right now, everyone s thinking of today. the and i m looking at tomorrow and the next day and longer. and what we don t realize i think frankly, the media and public have a difficult time understanding this is that as these flood waters move into let s say the kind of structure that fema will help rebuild, a school or public hospital or bridge or highway. as those waters condition to sit there, and rise and fall, the