c-span3. great. welcome, everyone. my name is michael matera. i'm the director here. it's great to have you all here today. we need to make requirement of csis an emergency announcement. if there is an emergency, i'm the emergency officer. follow me. we don't expect any problems but given that we're having a program today on hurricanes, one never knows. so this special public program on hurricanes irma and jose and the massive international response that's already under way. we've all seen the pictures of the tremendous damage that's been done on antiqua and barbuda, the british virgin islands, cuba, florida and elsewhere and we shouldn't forget hurricane harvey. disasters like these hurricanes always present an opportunity to refocus our efforts to see where we are doing well and where efforts need to be improved. emergency response systems have been tested like never before in the u.s. and in the countries of the caribbean. we organize the program today to bring greater attention to both the impact of the hurricanes and to the critical local and international response. this is the latest in a series of panels presentations and publications that we've been doing on the caribbean. two months ago we published a report discussing the most important aspects of u.s. relations with the caribbean. with mexico and canada, the caribbean represents our third border. our caribbean effort has been led from the very beginning by dr. george farrio who is here in the audience today whose had a long history of involvement at csis. george has been assisted by a great group of other senior advisers and associates, some of whom you'll see today and by our great america's program staff. without further ado, i'd like to turn the floor over to sally, a friend of csis and the executive director of the caribbean central american action. thank you very much. >> thank you, michael. first of all, i want to thank everybody who came here today, everybody's whose watching online. this is an important discussion. and caribbean central american action we are a nonprofit. we're happy to work with csis on anything involving our region and of course when something like irma happens, i think all of us who have an interest in the region, all of us who care about what's going on there, it's important that we all get together to talk about what the solutions are and what's happening. so, again, i want to thank csis for making this forum possible. my job here is going to be easy. i'm going to be introducing our two distinguished speakers. i did want to make one comment i think before i do that. i think a testament to hurricane irma, i've been describing it as the united nations of hurricanes. we have dutch, french, spanish, english, u.s. and independent states that have all been hit by this disaster, which i think brings particular focus on international coordination and on local coordination and in terms of getting relief supplies and trying to figure out how to make it all work smoothly. so that being said, i also would like to recognize and a testament to the international nature of course, mr. patrick jose who is the first council to the embassy of france and i believe we may be having miguel who is the first secretary of the embassy of cuba. of course both countries are impacted by the disaster. so my two fellow panelists today are on my -- your right. ambassador. and just the bios are in here. he's currently ambassador to the united states and the organization of american states for antiqua and barbuda. before taking up this appointment he was a senior research fellow at the institute of commonwealth studies, university of london in the uk and a senior fellow at a university in toronto. he has been in a diplomatic service in england and organization of economic cooperation and development, world trade organization and countless other roles representing his countries. so that's ambassador surant. a he's the ambassador of the kingdom of the netherlands to the united states and he's had a 36 year career with the foreign affairs focusing his work on european union and transatlantic relations. he's chaired various working groups, common, foreign and security policy. so that's the brief introduction of my fellow panelists. now i'd like to turn to ambassador saunders who of course is the ambassador for awning tigga and barbuda. it was probably the most impacted nation by hurricane irma and so we really want to hear as much as possible from the ambassador. >> thank you. i was hoping that would have been here. i'll stand here because it gives me a place to put these pieces of paper on. i'm impressed by that sampson-like performance. i want to start this presentation as i've done with almost every one of the single presentations i've made on this matter. over the last week and that is by far expressing sorrow to the people in government of the united states of america. the damage done and the 18 lives that were lost as hurricane irma stormed through the state of florida, georgia and the carolinas, coming on the heels of hurricane harvey which had taken upward of 70 lives in texas just weeks before, it's a difficult thing. those were 88 plus lives of people who if they were your brother, your sister, your mother, your father would be a matter of personal grief to you. and that's the thing about hurricanes and about natural disasters, we can watch them on television and in the media with a certain sense of withdraw. it's almost like a movie, but when it effects you yourself is when you understand how hurtful it can be. so i sympathize with the families of those people who are the unfortunate victims of the two mighty category 4 hurricanes that thundered on to the shores of this country. i also want to say to this particular group, that the fee nam na, brutal ferocious and mersless storms that the world is now witnessing has led my country to believe that climate change is a reality and it is here to stay. despite all those who may say it's fantasy of the chinese or whatever other reason that people say, that it doesn't exist. these storms know no borders. they cross them at will and with no fear of being turned away. there's no immigration officer that will say, no way, jose, should we decide to come in this direction. there are no ideologies or embarring o'ss so irma stormed through parts of cuba before it went on to parts of the united states. didn't know there was an embargo. they make no discrimination between large or small, they see no person of color. >> the destruction is ruthless. it's heartless and pitiless. that is why no -- can stand apart from the reality of climate change or the effects of global warming. that is why as year after year we are confronted with a trail of death and destruction that is the aftershock of these storms, all our countries should resolve to put climate change high on our agenda and work toward mitigation against it and to build resilience. now i'd like to talk to you specifically about antiqua and barbuda. an tigga and barbuda separated by 28 miles. that 28 miles was significantly important to antiqua on this occasion because while the eye of the hurricane went over barbuda and the outer edges of it went over antiqua, antiqua did not receive the kind of damage that barbuda did. there were two reasons for it. not only was it the fact that we did not get the full effect of the hurricane, but it was also preparation. it is the kind of enforced preparation if you like because we've been suffering these hurricanes now since 1995. in 1995, hurricane luis was a category 5 hurricane and it reduced antiqua to a snowless winter scene. if you could imagine a country in the tropics that just went through the most cruel winter you can think about in which there was no grass on the mountainside, no grass on the ground, no branches in the trees and no leaves on the branches, that was what antiqua was like 1995 amidst the rubble of the houses including my own which was tossed into the sea within a matter of minutes. we rebuilt from all of that. and every time we rebuilt, we rebuilt to higher standards and higher regulations. had we not done that on antiqua, we would not be today still open for business and we would not have been able to cope with the problem that we have of barbuda. but to turn to barbuda, for the first time in over 300 years, there is today not a living soul on barbuda. a society of people who lived for generations on that island had to be plucked away from all that they own, all that they know and all that defined them as a people. my government was compelled to evacuate all the 1,700 inhabitants of barbuda and move them to antiqua. we had prepared for that possibility before this hurricane came along. we had ordered all the building material, all the dry foods, all of the medicines that we thought we would need in an emergency and we had warehoused them in miami waiting to fly them into antiqua, which we were able to do two days after the hurricane pass issed so that when we evacuated the people from barbuda, we were able to address their immediate needs from our own resources. we did not have to wait for other countries and other agencies to help. but hurricane irma has mangled barbuda in a way that none of us could have imagined. there is now no poetable water, no electricity and such buildings that are left are pityful wrecks incapable of providing shelters and dangerous to enter. barbuda's 16 square miles, this city in which we live, washington, d.c. is 68 square miles, six square miles bigger than barbuda. hurricane irma was 364 miles wide when it spread itself across the island, overwhelming it in size, strength and veracity. its force was category 5 plus, the strongest hurricane ever seen in our region. with winds gusting at 220 miles per hour, neither barbuda nor its inhabitants stood a ghost of a chance against so a formidable and all encompassing demonstrative power. despite all that, barbuda had one fatality and that is again because the government had built a shelter concreted, concrete roof, everything, and most of the population went to that shelter. a few people, of course, stayed behind. it was always difficult to get people to leave their homes even in conditions like this and one woman with a little child, a toddler, little boy, refused to leave her home until it was far too late when her home began to crumble around her. she then decided to rush for the shelter. by then the winds were strong enough to pluck that child from her hands. she didn't see it again until the next day. when he was found dead. but we will mourn that child for long time. however we've got to be thankful that the rest of the people survived. we of course could not leave people on barbuda in those conditions and even though the barbudaions themselves amidst all those rubble and wreck were reluctant to leave their homeland, we knew two things were compelling us to move them out, not only the existing conditions on barbuda which could not sustain life but hurricane jose which was scheduled to travel on the same track as irma and to hit barbuda two days after it already had already reduced it to rubble and that was what compelled us to bring them. now, i've spoken but this story is better seen and therefore we've got a little video which i ask for your indulgence for you to look at for a few minutes and then i will wrap up this presentation with the current condition of the island. having survived the worst storm in living memory and knowing another is on the way, they're just exhausted and desperate to leave. >> i'm just waiting to get evacuated from here and then i'm going to come back and try to salvage something. i don't know. my whole life is here, so -- >> we're not coping. we definitely are not coping. everybody will tell you the same thing, not coping, everyone is in the same situation and nobody can help one another. >> the core of the hurricane carved a cruel and deadly path through these streets. a 2-year-old died as her mother tried to move her to safer ground but incredibly the rest of the people on this island survived the storm's wrath. >> we'll get you to safety and you'll be taken care of. >> the prime minister has traveled from neighboring antiqua to provide some reassurance. >> we'll get you all out. >> he knows this is a race against time for hurricane jose arrives in just a few hours. we heard him haggling for every boat, helicopter or plane to help with the evacuation. >> can it land here? >> but fear starts to spread that not everyone will get out in time. this woman's just been told she doesn't have a place on the next boat. >> horrifying scale of devastation it means that barely a building is salvageable, that means that the whole island will have to be rebuilt and the government has already admitted it simply doesn't have the money. >> the hope is the funds will come from some where. >> we hope friendly governments or international partners will step up to the plate and assist us. they should not see this as a form of coming with begging bull, this is a disaster a national disaster. >> the fragments of peoples' lives now lie in ruin. they can only hope that one day they will once again call this island home. but for now they must leave by any means possible including this barge and they don't know when they will return. >> i was restless. you couldn't get to sleep and you -- i think you was up all night trying to organize and keep things together. and then all of a sudden, the big crash came and then it just started bringing down everything. everything just started to decay and just crumble. >> what's your house like? >> well the roof is off and everything inside is destroyed, like, they're gone. >> what have you eaten in the last few days? >> nothing. hardly anything because there's nothing to eat. there's no biscuit or tea or water. that's about it. >> what do you do now? where do you go now? >> i have noed idea. everyone is homeless. >> are you going to rebuild? >> i don't know. i don't know whether that's a possibility and if -- if there is then it won't be for a very long time. >> how are you coping? are you just managing? >> we're not coping. we're definitely not coping. everybody will tell you the same thing, everyone is in the same situation and nobody can help one another. we can't help each other because everybody needs help. well, that was the exodus of barbudaions to antiqua. now, the people who came on to antiqua represent an increase overnight suddenly and without warning, with no preparation of 3% of our population. it must be very difficult for any country to suddenly have to cope overnight with an increase of their population of 3%. think of the medical services. the school places amongst those people were 500 children. school years just started. we have to find school places for them in antiqua, in an already overtaxed educational system. we've had to find food and water, a modicum of decent living but basically that is all it is. they're in shelters. antig begans have been very generous and open their homes and taken in many elderly people and young children but the bulk of them are now living in government buildings, in make shift areas. there of course very anxious to return to barbuda. that's their home. that's where everything they have is. that's where their parents and their ancestors are buried. that's where they got married, had birthday parties. but it's impossible to do so now and how long this will be like this i have no idea, because rebuilding barbuda is going to cost us in excess of $250 million. we simply don't have that kind of money. and the reason why it's going to cost that is because we just can't go to barbuda and build any buildings, we can't send water there and send people back because this hurricane season is not yet over. it'll go on until the middle of november and then it'll recur next year and the year after that and the year after that. we rebuild it to the way in which it is now, next year, another hurricane comes along, knocks the whole thing down and we start all over again and we come to the international community and ask for help. and after a while they'll get fatigued. i am not even sure that as i speak to you now this tragedy about which everybody feels very emotional will be a story any longer. the international media will have moved on to something else, some tweet or something that attracts their attention and this will be forgotten but it won't be forgotten for us, because we have to look after our people. my prime minister said in that video that we want, we're asking for it because we need. this is not just a disaster, it's a humanitarian crisis and our hope is that the international community will be responsive in helping us to rebuild barbuda in a suts takenable way that will resist these hurricanes which are clearly caused by climate change and global warming, which as i said is not only here to stay but i suspect will get worse in the coming years. thank you all very much. >> thank you ambassador. i think we'll turn to ambassador shur from remarks and i'd like to open the floor to questions, so if i could invite you to -- >> yeah. thank you for putting the podium back up. i'll make use of it. i'm in a way a different kind of animal, so to say. st. martin is differently -- is different from antiqua and barbuda but i think the disaster, the bottom line of all this is the same and i would like to start off with saying the same as my colleague has had, you in this country have suffered the same fate harvey, irma as we have and we our heart goes out to you like we know that your heart goes out to us in the caribbean and i say us, because the kingdom of the netherlands is a kingdom of four parts. there are four independent parts of the kingdom of the netherlands and one of those parts is st. martin, an island that we share with france, half of the island or 40% is dutch, roughly 40,000 people are living there. the other part is french. so if i say that i'm a different animal a little bit, i am not born obviously in st. martin, i'm born in the netherlands, the european part of the kingdom of the netherlands and in the european part we have had our share of disaster but a different share. we have had the share of the disasters of flooding in the netherlands so we hope we can cope with floods, the hurricane of this magnitude was something totally new to us in the netherlands. it's not new to our friends in the caribbean. it's quite rare in aruba and antiqua has experienced something similar before. and if i tell you a little bit of what happened in st. martin, yes, we had the wrath of the hurricane come over st. martin, to give you some figures, four people died on st. martin. one of them of natural causes and three deaths directly related to the hurricane. by the way, i'll speak on the dutch part of st. martin and not on the french part, the 40,000 people. more than 40 people injured of which 11 seriously injured. i think of all the structures to houses in st. martin, 90% is damaged, probably 30% is damaged beyond repair. it's -- it's a severe loss. we are in a different situation because st. martin being part of a wider kingdom, of course, the other three parts of the kingdom were not touched by st. martin and i think the thing you can see the other part of the kingdom including part in europe have immediately said we will not abandon to you. we are all part of one kingdom, four parts of one kingdom. we are there with you also in this moment of need. our king went out to last sunday to visit people who had been evacuated from the island. he visited st. martin on monday, stayed overnight on the island and went on tuesday, yesterday, to the two other islands that are very close by, small islands and visited them as a sign of solidarity and he reiterated that plaque, we are with you in your moment of need. another country with us in our moment of need was the united states. what do you do in the aftermath of something like that? we have been helped greatly and are still being held by the united states. we have a regular contact, the french authorities to dutch authorities and the united states working together what we can do for the island. our first concern after we -- after the storm had passed was evacuation and then evacuation of everybody who was in medical need and the problem we have found out with evacuation is that you have to be strict and you have to make a list and you have to make the list public and you basically have to prioritize how you will evacuate and of course the first one were the people in need, the medical people in need. and we evacuated in the netherlands and we mainly also evacua evacuated. the big problem with the evacuation is the airport of st. martin is on the dutch part of the island. the airport was severely damaged. the runway had to be cleared and then there was no control tower any more. there were no lights any more, so after the runway was cleared, it was cleared -- we could only fly during the day because there was absence of light and no control tower and we immediately instituted that there were only military planes going to fly. it was too dangerous for commercial flights and we had to have a very strict order of how we would evacuate. so if there are some lessons to be learned, i think that is one. you have to be strict in your evacuation, maybe one lesson earlier, prepositioning of assets. we had prepositioned some assets, both material, but also 100 person military on the island knowing irma was coming. i don't think anybody really realized how bad irma would be. we have now scaled up our military from 100 to 500 and we will be at 700 by tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and that in the end is probably the amount of people that you need but nobody knew. this was the first time for all of us what the i mpact of something like that would be. secondly, i must say and i mentioned it quickly before, we have been greatly helped by the international cooperation. we are in this together with the french government, with whom we immediately established contact with. we are in their crisis team. they are in our crisis team. the americas by the way are also in our crisis team and i think probably they will be there in the french crisis team as well but i cannot speak for them. we had close contacts with the brits who of course on the british islands. we have tried to coordinate as much as possible. we have coordinated evacuation flights. we also coordinated for instance, french -- water say problem. we coordinated with french and with the americans. we coordinate evacuation plans. we coordinate flight control, who comes in or out. we also coordinate -- we have the only port, i'm happy to say that the ports of st. martin is reestablished. we've had our first cruise ship coming in, not for a cruise but for picking up people that had more than 350 people going out and we, if necessary, will get our second cruise ship in tomorrow to pick up the -- if i can give you a state of play. all the medical -- medical emergencies are out. all the family of emergency responders are out. it was a priority category for us. i think of all the tourists that were there, which was our third priority group, probably 800 are left and we have gotten out by now more than 3 1/2 thousand on flights and more than 500 by boat. there's 800 roughly left and then you come to the people that are permanent resident on the island. some people want to leave. some people want to stay. we would love them to stay because they have to rebuild the island, but okay you cannot force them to stay, so we're talking with them now and see who has -- a number of students who are there. you have the american medical college on the island, 600 students. of course these people want to go out, big part of the americans are already out on the american flight. so that is as far as the evacuation is concerned. i think we are in a good spot by now. i think the evacuation, emergency part will be done by tomorrow. but okay, let's be honest, that is five, six days before you have everybody out but it's an island with considerable size. the water supply has been restored. people are drinking water from bottles. we have to diesel nation plants. also on the two smaller islands, water supply is there. the food supply has been there. it's restored. you'll get in one or two weeks you get a problem with food, because then the food supply, you know, with all the food packages that you're sending then we'll run out and you go back to the normal food supply that will be a problem, but we have time to address that because the port is open. you will be able to address that. communication is a huge problem like you have seen in florida. your telephone won't work. your internet connection is not there. i'm happy to say that i think that by tomorrow we think that the telephone system will be restored in st. martin which will make life for a lot of people a lot easier and this also will make for all those people that are missing their loved ones, they can now reestablish contact and we found that very important that the contact is there and people can say, hey, i'm okay. the house is not, but i'm there and that's the most important one. your loved ones are safe. for the longer term, there is a huge rebuilding operation ahead of us. we realize that we have assessment -- there's american assessment team on the ground. dutch assessment teams coming in this -- this week. anywhere between 1.1 and $2 billion is the first assessments that we hear and that i think will be modest on the modest size of the first assessments. there is a second problem. these are islands that live off tourism. i do not think they will have a lot of bookings in the near future so we have to make sure that they can survive. they have to have a source of income. all the more reason to rebuild the island as quickly as possible because you do not only rebuilt their dwellings, you rebuilt their source of income. we are happy to say that not only there's an outpouring in the netherlands of funds that are coming out from the people, there are donations now ready -- the national red cross of more than 3 million euros. we'll have what we call a telethon on friday. all the national televisions will band together and do a big program. the government will make an assessment what the damage is and we'll make the contribution. we have seen already that -- european part of the european union, the status of the french part is different from us but still it's clear that the european union will step in to an amount we do not know yet. so we'll get international solidarity. they're not only from the people from the region but from the people from europe where there is a strong bond with europe. lastly, i want to relay, i heard a very nice interview this morning. a lady from st. martin, whose house was still standing, no roof, heavily damaged and she said, okay, what are you going to do now? and basically her answer was, i never liked the roof. this is a possibility to rebuild my house to my own design. this is an absolute disaster but it's also an opportunity. we people in st. martin have experienced this before. we'll pick up our shovels and pick up our brushes, we will rebuild and it will be better and more beautiful than we were before irma. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> we are going to have to turn over to the next panel but i didn't want to not get an opportunity for a couple of questions to be asked by the audience. i do have a couple of questions myself, but for the sake of time, if i could invite, sir. >> my name is charles sharp. i'm with the black emergency managers association international. >> i heard you better without that microphone. >> i'm used to speaking. >> perfect. >> i'm with the black emergency management association here in washington d.c. and it's -- i know and my heart goes to the people of antiqua and barbuda. >> i don't understand a word you're saying, so the web cast is hearing you but i can't. >> okay. i'll try and get a balance between the two. >> regionally how involved has -- i really wanted to meet you at their upcoming conference in september, not in a situation like this but are they highly involved, i'm in touch with ron jackson, the executive directors and other members of sdema? nassau has a deployment plan for those who evacuated to return. are you looking for that phased approach for people returning back at some time to help rebuild in a step by step approach? >> well, the answer to the question and if i may deal with this one straightaway is that these are already days. this hurricane occurred on the 6th of september. we are not even a week away from that -- well we are week away from it now, but we have been preoccupied as you can understand with coping with 1,700 people and 3% increase in our population. we know that barbuda has to be rebuilt but how to rebuild it, in what way, the only -- the only thing that is definite about it is that it can't be rebuilt in the way that it was, that it has to be rebuilt to withstand these storms, which are clearly now here to stay. how we will plan that, how we will mobilize it is something that people are discussing but not in any definitive way. we will have to first send in teams of people to study that, we will need expert help with it as well. i know that prime minister's talked about not converting the area into completely green technology, so we move away from fossil fuels, we rely on energy. we bury the poles. those are the kind of vague concepts that are around. but barbuda, barbuda could be a major tourist destination in the caribbean. its beaches are amongst the most beautiful, maybe a little superior to yours and we have pink sand beaches. you can stand in the water up to your neck and see your toes. i am not exaggerating this. it's why it's the preferred place for holiday for princess diana and the two boys, one of whom is in the line for the throne of britain. it has that potential. but and of course it's used for that now. but in the future, we've got to ensure that the hotels are one thing, the living of how people live, the standard of their buildings, the quality of them is going to be very important and so to is going to be the utilities. so that's up the road. we've got an immediate problem. that one is very much on our minds. we know we have to do it and but you're right. as we do it it's going to have to be rephased resettlement. we can't send everybody back at the same time. but as homes get built and life becomes -- we get all of the utilities back into place, there will be that phase resettlement. the barbudaions are anxious to get home. our problem is stopping them. >> thank you. thank you very much. sorry. thank you very much for this presentation. i'm patrick from the french embassy and as my colleague and you, we are in a situation very, very sad situation for the population. and -- with no more damages but on st. martin, the french part, on september 6th and 7. and given the unprecedented -- [ inaudible ] for the time being, reconstruction 2 billion euros -- 95% of infrastructure were damaged. for french state swiftly deployed a wide range of means in order to help the population in distress. but i don't want to make that speech because as you say, mr. ambassador, we can't have this meeting every year. we can't continue to have this meeting every year. we -- billions of dollars and the victims are always the same. the population. and we have to think what we can do to -- to fight this situation and i think the first we can do is to continue to work against climate change, against the global warmings of the oceans because if this hurricane has been stronger it's because the sea is so warm, you can see the scientific works everywhere in the world, the corporation of scientists, the meteorologists all said the sea has been never warm like today. so the first we have to do that. the second, i think, we have to work all together closely to prevent. we have architect. i don't know what. some other scientist to build some infrastructure that can resist for the next hurricane. this is cost a lot of money. and we have to work all together very close to -- to -- to rebuild your island, our islands for the population. i don't want to make this speech but it's what i want to say with my heart and i would like to be with you for the future. thank you, sir. >> thank you. one more maybe. if there's one more question we'll take that. if not, we'll close out this panel. going, going, going. so i'd like to thank the two ambassadors. i think there are a lot of lessons to be learned by what has happened as a result of irma. again, everybody whether u.s., kingdom of netherlands, france, britain, and the independent territories in the caribbean, we're all affected, there is a -- there's a lesson about resilience to be learned about how can we make the islands more resilient, how can we build better to ambassador saunders point are we going power lines underground, everything that can be done to make the countries more resilient but the point about climate change, as the waters continue to rise, you can't be resilient against a 50 foot ocean swell. so there are a lot of considerations that are out there about how we build back better. but -- but i think i would like to close on that note so we can turn over to the next panel but i would just ask all of you will in the room who are here today who are watching online, if there is anything you can do to contribute to the recovery of our countries in the region, that will all be appreciated and we look forward to working with you as we -- we won't forget about this two weeks from now or a year from now. this is going to be a long-term process, so all of the friends who are here thank you and we look forward to hearing from you and working with you. >> thank you. [ applause ] thank you very much. i'm mark schneider. i'm a senior adviser and i'm pleased to welcome the second panel. we've just heard from the distinguished ambassadors what is a very stunning and really very depressing report on the magnitude of the impact of hurricane irma on their islands as well as others, on cuba, on puerto rico, on the british virgins islands, on the u.s. virgin islands and it's clear that the vulnerabilities boths small and large to the power of nature in this situation. we have with us today two distinguished individuals who can talk about the response, particularly in this case of the u.s. response, both with respect to immediate relief and hopefully looking down the road as we just heard there's going to be an incredible need for coordinated support and cooperation for the reconstruction and rebuilding, rebuilding in a way that takes into account the threats and dangers of climate change in the region. for that we have margy bond and james fleming whose usid's hurricane response director at the office of foreign disaster. marringy's had a distinguished career at state including her previous assignment in the u.s. embassy in kabul and before that some four years in the state department international organizations bureau. she's a harvard graduate. and one of the most impressive elements of her career was her work as a peace corp volunteer in the republic. congo. james fleming who also began his development career the right way in the peace corp after graduating from college in physics, he joined in 1999 and worked as the operations division chief responsible for the disaster assistance response teams. those teams i've worked closely with them in haiti and i value greatly their work. james now is usid's division chief for disaster response in asia, latin america and europe, the middle east and central asia. and we'll begin with margy. good afternoon and thank you csis for inviting me to represent the state department here at this panel discussion today. first of all, on behalf of the state department i want to extend our deepest sympathies to all those who have suffered losses because of hurricane irma. we share in your grief and we -- and we are living this disaster with you. ourselves. also, i think this roundtable today is an important opportunity to reaffirm our united stance with the caribbean and with those affected by the hurricane. since hurricane irma's first landfall in antiqua and barbuda to the heartbreaking damage it caused in the british virgin islands the u.s. department has worked in lock step with other u.s. government agencies in particular the department of defense and usaid as well as with caribbean governments and international partners to evacuate citizens from the united states and provide humanitarian support. hurricane irma has underscored or interconnectedness as sally mentioned, it's the u.n. of z-ofts and it under scores the need for close cooperation in the region by working together we can move beyond the events of the past few weeks and recover and rebuild. the humanitarian support that the u.s. government is delivering and will continue to deliver in the coming days, weeks and months will address the most pressing needs of the caribbean people, but even as we respond to the immediate humanitarian needs of the crisis, we already are looking ahead to how do we addressed lessons learned as ambassadors has mentioned how do we mend the deeper longer lasting wounds beyond just the cleanup. as you know or many of you may know, in june of this year, we completed a comprehensive strategy to increase our engagement with the caribbean. the strategy is called caribbean 2020. the disaster assistance that we are providing now is in line with that commitment. but in caribbean 2020, our strategy, we also pledge to work with caribbean countries going forward to address issues of a resilience of emergency response capacities and of infrastructure so that we can respond better to major natural disasters like hurricane irma. we understand that there's a lot left to be done to determine the extent of the damage as others have mentioned we're still in the assessment phase. we need to continue support those seeking shelter. we need to continue supplying relief supplies. moving forward our focus needs to start to shift from rescue to recovery including robust humanitarian support and i know these are issues that are going to be discussed more by james after me. but before i turn to james, i did want to take a moment to discuss a little bit about the u.s. government's response efforts in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. before the storm hit the department had begun monitoring hurricane irma as it formed off the coast of africa in late august and we issued travel warnings to u.s. citizens in the path of the hurricane, we authorized departure for u.s. embassy personnel in haiti, cuba, bahamas and the dominican republic. we're very grateful to our war denz in the field and others who helped us to pass this urgent message. it alerted many to prepare and others to change or delay travel plans. we then stood up a 24 hour task force to facilitate the evacuation of u.s. citizens in need to provide support to u.s. missions overseas and to coordinate and this is one of the most important parts is to coordinate u.s. government assistance with our interagencies colleagues and partners. i served on our task force on several of our shifts when after it's been 24 hours task force so i can tell you that at every level the state department, the commitment has been there, everybody has been standing up to provide support to this relief effort. my last update that i received from the task force indicates that our efforts so far have led to the evacuation of more than 2,300 people from st. martin including more than 300 people evacuated by royal caribbean and 2,000 by air evacuations including military support and other support. to further support evacuation efforts in tortola, san juan and st. martin we have positioned a number of our consular offices to puerto rico and other posts in the caribbean and evacuation flights remain under way. we are extremely grateful during this whole event and the aftermath to our colleagues at the department of defense as well as our dutch, french and british authorities for their cooperation. for more specific information about travel, about evacuations and travel and shelters and services to americans and citizens, i refer people viewing and who have questions and specifics about each of the individual countries that they look at travel.state.gov on the website. the state department website. and in conclusion i want to thank you you for your continued support to the u.s. and caribbean cooperation, particularly csis, the caribbean am bags dorz, sally for her endless efforts as well and many others who have directly shaped the caribbean 2020 strategy that we are beginning to implement. as we move forward in our relief efforts, we'll continue to rely on you our partners, to try to path to even more robust relationships between the united states and the caribbean. that you csis for organizing this event. our hearts go out to our friends and family in the caribbean who are going through this devastating disaster. thank you very much. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> james? >> thanks. well, first, thanks to mark and csis for the invitation to come and talk to you today and have a discussion. usaid's office of disaster assistance, our responsibility is to lead the u.s. government's disaster response for the people effected around the world by disasters. and this is a disaster that we could see coming as mentioned at least a week ahead of time so one of the things that we did even before the disaster is prepare as much as we could in advance and so what that meant for us is we predeployed our disaster professionals across the caribbean to our best guess to where the storm would have the greatest impact. so we placed people in haiti, dominican republic and in barbados where we could get to any of the other islands that were affected. one of the other things we did is we activated -- we have local consultants in almost every country in the caribbean and we activated all of those local consultants and they are our eyes and ears and coordinate very closely with government emergency management agencies throughout the region. also what we did is we prepared airlifts of commodities to be able to respond very quickly to wherever the storm impacted greatest. as these hurricanes go they never -- they never follow the exact track that you expect, so our staff after seeing where the storm was going we shifted our staff really away from haiti and the dominican republic toward the bahamas and antiqua and barbuda and then st. martin as well. and so at the moment we have disaster assistance response team members on bahamas, on antiqua as well as on st. martin. so the way our assistance, the united states assistance is triggered, it's triggered by a request from the effected country. so we have received to date four disaster declarations which are issued that initiates our assistance. we received disaster declarations from the bahamas, from antiqua and barbuda, from holland and from france. and i've worked as us aid for 19 years and i think this is the first time i recall receiving disaster declarations from the netherlands and from france. but wherever we receive a disaster declaration, i feel personally that it's actually an honor to receive a request for help and for our teams to go there is -- that's what we're trained to do and we enjoy doing that, so this is -- this is what -- this is what we do. so when we -- when we go into a country, we recognize that the lead for that disaster response is the local government and so our job as americans is not to take over but is to support that local government. so when our disaster assistance response teams arrive in the bahamas, we're coordinating with the bahamas government first and foremost. we also coordinate with regional entities. there was a question earlier about the caribbean disaster emergency management agency, we coordinate with them but we also have a jb to coordinate the entire u.s. government response. so we coordinate with department of state, department of defense, any other u.s. government agency that has a role in that disaster response. then we work with u.n. organizations, international ngos, national government, nongovernmental organizations, local nongovernment organizations to actually start implementing assistance. so far what the united states has done in terms of disaster response, we have released an initial amount of funds to each of the four countries from which we have received a disaster declaration. so we have provided an initial amount of $100,000 to all four countries, usually that's channelled through the local red cross for immediate life saving assistance in that country. what we have also done is we have dispatched two relief flights that are arriving tomorrow, one in antiqua and one to the bahamas. these relief flights are full of whatever that country needs. in these cases it includes shelter materials, it includes blankets, hygiene kits, household items, water containers and so forth. we also have received a request for water treatment from st. martin and what we did is look through the u.s. government to who could provide this type of desalinization. in this case it was the department of defense that had this equipment, so we in turn asked the department of defense to provide this equipment, a couple of these reverse osmosis purification units are being delivered immediately with more on the way. what we're also doing is -- it's clear that this is in the early stage of the disaster response, so our teams are on the ground conducting assessments and looking for gaps in ways to respond in the future. and the last point i'll make before turning it over to question and answers, is that not only do -- we do response and response is very important when lives are on the line, but you've heard a number of comments and questions about preparedness. that's an essential part of any disaster response is what you can do ahead of time. and this is a big part of what usaid does is disaster response and help communities become more resilient to disasters around the world. i have a personal saying is that, how we honor the people who have been affected by disasters is doing better the next time. learning lessons for response and preparedness that we can put in place and again, that's how we honor those who have been affected by disasters. thank you. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> i think we have questions from the audience. >> [ inaudible ]. >> charles sharp again. in terms of regional coordination, usaid, i also know that the agn, association of south asian nations are also contributing highly to rebuilding the caribbean. whose coordinating that effort or is it like a free for all? is it a free for all for a lot of ngos? whose coordinating them all, making sure the money is being spent at the community level? that's key to rebuilding. >> there are a lot of layers to that question. what i would say first is that the responsibility is that sovereign territory. so if it's bahamas, the ba hemion government is responsible for all the assistance that comes into their country and coordinating that. a lot of times if a country has exceeded its capacity to coordinate on its own, a lot of times it'll ask the u.n. to come in and help coordinate. i'm not aware that any of these countries have asked for that type of assistance yet, but it's an option should they need it. i think the other thing that you're talking about is the principals under which assistance is provided and i think one of the core tenets of humanitarian assistance is you have to involve the people that you're helping with the design of a program. so in the intervention that you're doing, it can't be done appropriately unless the people who are receiving that assistance are part of the process, and any person who is responding internationally should be operating under those principals to ensure that that's -- that's the proper way. >> other questions? >> thank you. good afternoon. my name is jillian marcel and i'm here representing research and technology park from the u.s. virgins islands. one of the things about the tech park that i represent is that it is completely commercially funded and so the question that i have is, as part of thinking differently about how we respond to this disaster, is there a role for the private sector? because their technology companies, their 50 companies in my organization that are ready and willing to be involved in the response and the recovery and i would be very pleased to hear from you as to how we might work with you to organize that? thank you. >> sure. i think in my career, this is something that has changed dramatically in the 19 years i've been involved in disaster response. it used to often be u.n. organizations and donor governments that were responding to disasters. i think that you're seeing a huge influence from the private sector. not only with funding but with innovations and so forth in responding to disasters. and so i think it's absolutely vital and it's a key piece of any response and what i would say first of all, is that any response has to be tailored to what the needs are? it's not what you have to offer but it's what is needed and is there a match between what you have to offer and what the needs are? so going back to our first question, i think the first question or first place to look is with that sovereign government, to see what the needs are and see if you have a role to play in that. then there's usually a coordination mechanism set up, most countries have a national emergency management agency in which you can plug in and see if this fits within the response plan. so those are my initial suggestions. >> i just wanted to add also i think your question is very much matches up with the spirit of our caribbean 2020 strategy which i mentioned. what's different about this strategy is it really was developed hand in hand with the members of the ngos, with csis, academia and the private sector, where we're working with very closely as we develop the strategy, we're now in the implementation phase and we have several working groups advancing the pillars of the strategy and there is an opportunity for continuing -- actually it's essential for the success of the strategy that the way it was drafted and imagined that we continue that in the implementation process. so we would welcome working with members of the private sector, members of academia, the diversity of opinions that are here in this room and the strategy is built around six pillars, security, diplomacy, prosperity, energy, health and education. so we are working -- we have six working groups working on those areas and so if there's an area you would like to plug in to, i'll give you my business card at the end of the session and we can establish a contact. >> we have one additional question from michael ma teara. >> thank you very much. i'm the director of the americas programmatera. i wanted to thank everyone who's been a part of putting this together and carrying it off. i have a question. we had a brief meeting before this event began with miguel velez from the cuban embassy. he talked about how havana still doesn't have very accurate reports of the damage that apparently covers about 90% of the island. apparently cuba was hit much worse than many people know right now. what is -- what is u.s. aid and the policy on assistance to cuba? have the cubans asked for assistance? i assume they haven't. what is the policy on that? we're in a new state with cuba. i'm just wondering how that's reflected at this point in time. >> sure. >> thank you. >> it's a really interesting question and one of the things that i like about working in humanitarian assistance for the u.s. government is that we do have policies and authorities that allow us to work in any country around the world upon request. and i think you know, as i mentioned before, this is triggered by a request. and so so far from the cuban government, we have not received a request for assistance. but we are checking in with the embassy regularly just to ensure there is no request. we don't expect one. but should there be one, we're prepared to respond in cuba, as well. >> if i could, two additional ways that frequent lit international community responds to natural disasters in cuba is through acha at the u.n. and the office of the coordination of humanitarian affairs and through the pan-american health organization on emergency relief in the area of medical needs. and hilde suspect that since there is a both boxes in havana, i would assume they would be engaged. frequently they then reach out to the u.s. for special kinds of assistance that might be needed that those organizations might not have. >> thank you. david lewis, manchester trade and senior associate at csis. any of you but mark especially with the five decades experience u.s. government and margie with the strategy, i'd like to go back to sort of ambassador saunders' piece on the indiscriminate movement of natural disasters over what i believe sometimes are artificial sovereign nation state boundaries particularly in the caribbean which is the one region in the world that is host to multinational countries, the europe is in the caribbean. the united states is in the caribbean. and on and so forth. one of theicious we discussed in the briefings for the strategy was that on sort of very clear issues, security, counter narcotics, economic development, it's very inadequate to think just of the sovereign nation states issues because these are now multinational issues. i'd wonder if any one of you would comment now with a natural disaster covering so many different sovereign states, local states, puerto rico, u.s., virgin islands are not sovereign states. these are local states of the united states and they're doing work in the region. what can it show us about what we need to do for assistance and other areas to really streamline that much more. particularly when you've got the two major economic and political powers in the world, europe and the united states right there in the caribbean with massive amount of resources and expertise to shed light and help on this. >> if you'd like to go, i'll comment after. >> well, i think the situation is of coordination is something we recognized for a time has always been a challenge and it's something that we'll continue to need to address especially in light of these kinds of natural disasters or transnational issues. certainly in the strategy we developed that with an eye of how do you -- how does one country do everything. one country do everything. everything has to be done in partnership. it's not just partnership with other countries. it's partnership with all of the players that are in the arena. so i think that is something we've recognized that we want to continue to -- we hope the strategy is going to be a vehicle and a mechanism for advancing that kind of cooperation. but certainly every donor doesn't need to do the same thing in every country. we need to identify where the comparative advantage is, who has the value added, what is needed as james said, what is it that the country itself needs and what are the people asking for. i think this is a step in the right direction in terms of advancing that kind of cooperative approach. whether it is to a transnational threat or whether it is to something like a disaster the one we're living with. it's a challenge we recognize and welcome everyone's ideas how do we address that. >> yeah, maybe i'll take a slightly different take on it just specifically on disaster response. i think your question is a really good one. the way i think about this is maybe in a concentric circle model. starting at the outside, i had mentioned sadima. i think you're seeing more of these regional entities around the world so the caribbean, we heard about the southeast asia nations have one and so forth. this is something that u.s. aid office of foreign disaster assistance we have actually invested in. we have provided funds to sadima to build their capacity to respond regionally on behalf of the member nations. that's the first circle. that is important. i also think that this idea of building capacity to respond regionally is important but also build capacity of nations to respond. so over time, we'll work with different governments and their emergency management agencies to help build their capacity so that you don't need as much international help. and we've seen success stories on this around the world. last, i would say that this idea of capacity building, it can't stop at the national level within a country. and you know, you referred to this i think that getting down to the local municipalities and they're always the first responders is the local community and building some capacity there is critical especially for this life-saving idea. and it's something else we have focused on over time you know across the world including in the caribbean. >> i would just add that there is now within caricom, there is a disaster relief committee set up where u.s. aid and the state department have been in touch and worked together. the other point we haven't mentioned is that there is now in fact with respect to france and also with respect to the uk the d.o.d. has helped provide logistic support and engaged in cooperative action with them. and one of the things that you haven't mentioned is u.s. aid has prepositioned a lot of the relief supplies in the caribbean, as well in florida which unfortunately i don't think very much of that was able to be accessed. but there is a lot of prepositioning that's been done. sally, you wanted to say somethin something. >> me again. i just want to make a quick comment because i think one of the things that's been interesting to watch over the last week is the fact that the private sector has been very responsive. i think for those of us who are on the follow the caribbean tourism organization, caribbean hotel and tourism association, their information coming out on what's going on has been probably some of the best minute by minute accounts of how hotels have been reacting, what the damage has been. and for us at ccaa and the work we do with tropical shipping in terms of doing disaster management workshops, our focus has always been on private/public sector cooperation and coordination in preparing for a disaster. i think and that's one of the things we'll continue to stress and i'll talk to you about it. but so that's one thing. i think i also wanted to point out because we have mark from 84 lumber. that's another private sector entity going in there and doing work and ready to provide ass t assistance. there are a lot of these private sector activities taking place and helping the transition. i wanted to bring that up. also worth mentioning the caribbean electric utilities corporation have protocols in place to provide assistance from one island to the other so that they can help each other rebuild. there are a lot of these things taking place at the private sector level in the collaboration with the public sector making a difference. i think, james, to your point, a lot of the work that's been done on the preparation has been as somebody said to me it's paid off in spades because the preparation has i think mitigated a lot of the problems that we could have had. and that's not to underestimate the huge challenges that are ahead because the recovery is going to be a massive amount of work on the recovery. but i think but good work has been done. now it gets into the harder work of recovering. so thank you. >> the last question for this gentleman right here. >> since my name was mentioned i think i'd say a few things. when you think of 84 lumber, you think of lumber. that's not really what we're all about, especially in a disaster situation. no one mentioned the turks and caicos hit by the eye of the storm, as well. we have people on ground there. we gave them a half million dollar credit line for any supplies they need for emergency or reconstruction or water or red cross blankets or whatever esis needed. we gave a quart million credit line to the bahamas government so that they would do the same thing. we've also askedule ker her meese toes write credit for all the nations involved in the disaster so we can help provide them about what they need up front. building and construction is going to come a year from now. what we need to do right now is get the supplies needed that the countries that need them. we're going to put boots on ground in every nation to help them evaluate the construction that's there, what the needs are that are there. we did chile after the earthquake, mongolia with their district. we did the caribbean, did a presentation with huntington bank. we're willing to go into the banking industry and help provide loans for people who help rebuild their homes, as well. these are things the private sector can do and get involved in with the help of others. so in the affected nations we're offering our help to go in and work with their banking systems, work with their contractors, work with their governments to come up with the solutions as you suggested earlier what to do better for the next time. so we're not just a lumber company. we really help work with people and countries and companies to try to get through the hard times. >> great. >> i think on that relatively positive note, we're going to thank everyone who attended. and thank our two panelists. thank you very much. [ applause ]. today, the federal government banned the use of kaspersky software in federal agencies according to "washington post." kaspersky is a russian brand of security software and "uss officials say they're concerned that the company has ties to cyber espionage. u.s. officials say acting homeland security secretary elaine duke has given agencies a timeline to get rid of the software. >> sundays at 7:00 p.m. eastern on oral histories, a series of six interviews with prominent photojournalists. this sunday, a conversation with photojournalist frank johnston about his photos and career. >> when they brought oswald out, he was within three feet of me when they -- when jack ruby who leaped out from behind me and went between bob jackson and i and fired the gun. and we were all thrown to the floor because there must have been 100 police in that basement that sunday morning. >> wap our photojournalists interviews on oral histories sundays at 7:00 p.m. eastern on "american history tv" on c-span3. >> a look now at president trump's legislative priorities for congress. white house legislative affairs director marc short lists tax reform and changes to dhaka are the deferred action for childhood arrivals program. this christian science monitor breakfast lasts about an hour.