Maritime Security Expo
Baltimore, MD
May 5, 2011
As Delivered
Thank you very very much, Jayson Ahern, it is great to be with you and it’s good to join with all of you on this important topic, a topic that all of us are going to be living with as a country and in many new and different ways for the rest of our lives, so it’s great to be with all of you.
And I want to begin by welcoming you to Baltimore, the original Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, where we’ve been doing homeland security since 1814. And I also have to acknowledge that we’re joined by Captain O’Malley from the Coast Guard, no relation, but he was the person who graded our improvement in improving port security and I’m sure it was worth at least an extra point or two on the extra credit section. You don’t have to be an O’Malley to protect the Port of Baltimore but by God it sure helps, doesn’t it?
I wanted to talk with you briefly about security and about resiliency in particular and about the imperative that all of us have. I have to tell you that knowing the history of our port and knowing the history of our nation and how intertwined the Port of Baltimore was with that resilient defense that characterizes our people at their best, it was a source of great shame and embarrassment when our port was ranked among the lowest scoring in terms of our preparedness, our protects, our defenses, our security. It did not happen by accident, it did not happen by chance. It was the product of choices, it was the product of priorities, it was the product of a lot of hard work that allowed us to go, enabled us to go, from one of the worst to one of the best, from an F to an A, and we need to continue to keep our guard up.
We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude, and that was underscored this week, to the men and women of our armed forces and our national security agencies. This week, I think, the memories of 9/11 have weighed heavily on all of our hearts and minds. It’s caused all of us, I think, to reflect and go back to what we were thinking and where we were on that day on September 11th. And I hope that the events of this week will bring some degree of closure to the families of those who have lost loved ones in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington on that date.
With the success of this incredibly well-executed, courageous mission, also comes a somber reminder that al-Qaeda is still out there and they are still trying to kill us. When I received the news I was in the company of some other governors at an education conference in North Carolina, and immediately all of those governors’ minds stated racing to their to-do list of protection, which is a shift. That would not have happened 10 years ago but all of those chief executives immediately started reaching for their blackberries, reaching for their phones, and going through their to-do list of protection.
Over the last 10 years I believe that we have moved from one important concept to the dawn of another important concept and that’s what I wanted to spend my time talking with you about in our moments together. And that is the word that all of us used, 10 years ago, was the word protection.
We have to move from protection to resilience. We wanted to protect personal equipment, right? We wanted to protect our port, we wanted to protect our infrastructure, we wanted to protect our water systems. In fact, in those early days we were actually deploying armed guards to guard our water reservoirs. It was all about protection, protection, protection.
Increasingly as we get better at this – and we’re along way from where we need to be – we need to move from protection to resilience. Resiliency in our planning, our design, our building of the built environment,… Resilience in our critical systems – our water, our sewer,… resilience in our electrical grid, resilience in our fuel systems,… resilience in our transportation network – not only mass transit and not only highway but our critically important commerce, our port, our rail, our airports. And resilience in terms of our cyber systems, our information systems. It’s making sure that when the next natural disaster or attack happens on these shores, and they will happen on these shores, that we are able and better prepared to bounce back from it and to do so as quickly as possible.
So what does resiliency look like? I believe that in a more resilient Maryland our citizens are better prepared when a disaster strikes, and when it’s over they are better able to quickly get their lives back in order, with minimal disruption, minimal economic hit. In a resilient and more resilient Maryland, our key infrastructure assets like our port, our transportation systems are designed to withstand a disaster, are designed to take that hit and to continue to move forward, to resume operations with as little interruption as possible.
The human body is capable of absorbing many blows and many wounds and still being able to move forward. The human heart can continue to pump and function up to a point. An ecosystem like the Chesapeake Bay can take a lot of damage and continue to live and to move. In the same way we need to think about the very connected world in which we live as a body that must be better capable of taking that blow that we will no doubt receive as we climb into this ring of asymmetrical warfare and a climate that will be seeing ever more frequent natural disasters.
Building a resilient Maryland not only helps us better prepare to respond to disaster, but it just might, in the case of intentional bad actors, it just might deter terror attacks from happening in places that are more resilient and where it is known that those blows can be absorbed with minimal disruption. Resilience takes away one of the prime motives of a terror attack—the disruption of our economy, the disruption of our lives, and the economic harm.
It’s all part of a strategic goal that we’ve set as a state in becoming a leader of homeland security. It’s one of our strategic, enterprise-wide goals, and we’ve set this goal about four years ago. When CNN, when Times Magazine, when Newsweek, whenever there’s a survey of which cities and states are prepared and which ones are unprepared, I want our state at the top of the prepared list. And I hope that the people here who are trying to kill us will take note of the surveys, and take note of the hard work that makes these improvements happen.
Public safety is the most sacred responsibility that any of us in government have. I look out at the uniforms in this room and I know that you would not be in the line of work that you are in if it were not for the understanding in your heart of just what an important job, what an important duty security is.
To improve resilience in Maryland, we focused on tools and resources that are themselves resilient and dual purpose that we can use to fight traditional domestic crime and natural disasters, as well as to improve homeland security in the 21st century. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I believe they are intrinsically related. I believe that they are mutually reinforceable. It’s like opposing muscle groups on the same limb—the relationship, the connectedness is isometric.
One of the best examples of dual-purpose capacity that we have embarked on achieving is interoperability in our communications system. All of saw the tragic results of not having interoperable communication on September 11th, when the police were ordering their personnel out of the towers, and the fire department was still ordering their personnel into the towers. In an emergency when first responders are coming in, especially from other jurisdictions in a metropolitan-wide event, in a statewide event, that interoperability is not only important for the communication and deployment, it’s important for force protection.
So we set the goal to achieve interoperability among our first responders. And more importantly, not only have we set the goal, we’ve put a lot of money down on the table. In times when we’ve cut our operational budget by $6.6 billion in our state, we have nonetheless protected, increased, improved upon the big investment we’ve made to achieve interoperability. Having a goal without taking the actions to achieve it is not really worth a whole lot.
To accomplish this goal we’ve built regional interoperable solutions in four out of our five regions in the state, with the final regional system in Southern Maryland slated for completion by the end of this year. In January, we signed a contract with Motorola, to build out Maryland’s first truly statewide interoperable radio systems.
If you think about it, many if not most of the tools we use for homeland security are dual-purpose. Our closed-circuit TVs, which have become ubiquitous around our state, are not only used for monitoring key infrastructure but also for cracking down on crime in our public transit system. Our license plate readers – they’re not only good for identifying those vehicles whose registration has lapsed, or for people who have blown through tolls, but they are also extremely helpful for catching cars of interest, for getting word out when we have cars of interest, in the event that FBI and others need to cooperate with the state in a national response.
Resilience, response, and recovery after a disaster is also key. We’ve made power resilience at our emergency shelters a high priority. How do you do this? We are one of only 17 states that invest any money into school construction and school renovations. So we passed regulations this year that require that all new renovations, all new school constructions, must be equipped to received back-up power generation in a sort of “plug-and-go” capacity, so that they can take advantage of the investments we’ve made over the year to create a rolling stock of back-up power generators. So as we build and improve our infrastructure we are also making sure that in the case of disaster our citizens will be able to be sheltered in facilities that are themselves resilient in an emergency.
Look, I know that in our time here I can only kind of scratch the surface, but our focus on resilience complements the 12 core capacities for creating a better-prepared Maryland, our to-do list if you will.
Number one—interoperable communications. Number two—intelligence/information sharing. Number three—HAZMAT/explosive device response. Number four—personal protective equipment for all our first responders. Number five—biosurveillance systems statewide, something we did not have on September 11th but something that we have now. Vulnerability assessments, something we did not have on September 11th but things that we have and continually update now. Training and exercises—things we rarely did on September 11th but things that we are increasingly doing, and more frequently and professionally doing now. CCTV networks that were only just beginning 10 years ago, are now connected, built out, and truly statewide. Mass casualty and hospital surge capacity, something we rarely thought about as a people on September 11th, something we are improving our capacity with now. Planning that is ongoing and constantly refreshed, not something that we do at the beginning of a four-year term. Backup power and communications, things we have actually achieved. Transportation security, a thing we rarely thought about but something that we constantly work on now.
That’s the to-do list. But in these new times with new threats, our security needs of the 21st century also require new thinking. It requires a new vocabulary. It requires not only new terminology but it also requires a new concept of engagement. Engagement for confronting America’s security needs in the 21st century. To move our country forward, we ourselves have to move forward, from a point of having our to-do list, however important, to developing a better-connected platform of resilience that allows us to continue to be the land of the free and the home of the brave. Thanks very very much.
