Maryland Meta-Leadership Summit for Preparedness
July 16, 2009
[As Prepared]
Thank you Doug, and everyone with the Casey Foundation, and thank you to today’s other partners – the CDC Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, and the Harvard School of Public Health.
Thanks especially to all of you for choosing to be here today, and for choosing to step forward and answer the call to service on what I would argue is the greatest challenge facing any free people: the safety and security of the public.
We really do have a great group assembled here today—leaders from business, leaders from the non-profit sector, and leaders from government. Your participation reinforces simple but important truths: that we are indeed One Maryland; that we are a community, not a crowd; and that we are all in this together.
Protecting our people and preparing our State for emergency situations are critical pursuits to every part of our mission statement in the State of Maryland, which is: to strengthen and grow the ranks of an upwardly mobile class; to improve public safety and public education in every part of our State; and to expand opportunity to more Marylanders rather than fewer.
You can’t do any of this if you’re unable to protect the public from threats foreign and domestic, natural and manmade. Thus we’ve identified security integration – along with sustainability and the skills and health of our workforce – as central strategies for preparing our State to lead and compete in a 21st century world where we face a new array of challenges and opportunities.
Underpinning our ability to prepare for our homeland security challenges, is the question of whether we are a community or merely a crowd. In a crowd, people look away from the face of pain and suffering and need; passing the buck to others and renouncing their own responsibility to assist the victims. In a community, we support our neighbors and we accept our own shared responsibility to advance the common good.
In our remaining time together, I want to share a few of my own thoughts about how our homeland security challenges relate to this essential question. And I want to ask you for your help with a new initiative we are launching today which seeks to involve every citizen in the safety, security, and preparedness of the broader community we call Maryland.
A Community or a Crowd?
As we consider the question of whether we are a community or a crowd, I ask you to think back to Hurricane Katrina. If you will recall, our nation struggled with this very question in the difficult days after the levies broke. At the time, many citizens in our country choose to look away. Some even suggested it was the victims’ responsibility to help themselves. Sadly, many of those who held this opinion happened to work for our federal government.
As we in the City of Baltimore watched the destruction of a major American city and large swaths of the Gulf Coast live on CNN, we knew we wanted to help. And so we called everyone in a leadership position in Louisiana that we could reach until we found a mission where we were needed. Then we deployed: sending 150 men and women from the Baltimore Police Department, the Fire Department, and the Department of Public Works.
Our team from Baltimore stayed for ten days and searched and cleared hundreds of destroyed houses in St Bernard’s Parish. And they didn’t go it alone. You see, when we decided to assemble a rescue convoy from Baltimore, we immediately realized that we needed fuel. And so I called some of our partners in the private sector late at night and asked them if they’d be willing to give me a tanker or three of gasoline, diesel, some drivers, and send them into the depths of the Gulf Coast for an undetermined period of time.
You know what? They did. And they didn’t get stuck or run out of gas. Because our partners in the private sector stepped up, our men and women were able to clear roads and a ferry landing, helping a city on the brink get back on its feet as Marylanders filled in for firefighters, police and other Louisiana public servants, allowing them get a little rest and care for their own families.
Where did the food, clothing, and supplies they handed out to the hurricane victims come from? Businesses, non-profits, and houses of worship.
One Maryland: a community, not a crowd.
It’s a notion we were reminded of when Hurricane Isabel struck Maryland. We were able at the time to evacuate trapped citizens from Bowley’s Quarters because the company which runs Duck Tours in Baltimore donated their “ducks” to the fire department before the storm even hit. A community not a crowd.
And during the early days of the H1N1 outbreak – when we worked together as a state government, as a federal government, and as local governments and businesses – once again we reminded of the importance of working in concert.
As we anticipate the return of H1N1 this fall, we are a talking about some difficult things as a nation – a community in its broadest sense. If we close schools, where do our kids go, and what do their parents do? If the federal government provides millions of doses of vaccine, as it hopes to, how are we going to distribute them? If the flu does hit and sickens many of our citizens, how will we keep key businesses open? Groceries on the shelves?
We’re working on all of this now, as I know you are. I’ve launched a state government-wide effort to revise and shore up our continuity of operations plans, and we’ve done outreach to local government and offered help. I know businesses are busy doing the same. As we have learned time and again in our recent history, working together isn’t just as nice thing to do – it’s a necessity.
The Maryland Civic Guard
The Maryland Civic Guard, which we are announcing this morning, draws its purpose from this notion that we are a community, not a crowd. It is designed to recruit every Marylander into the cause of preparing and protecting our State – recognizing that there are no extraneous citizens; no such thing as a spare Marylander.
And here’s where we need your help. Our Civic Guard will seek to build on the strength of current partnerships between local governments, volunteer organizations, private businesses, and our state government.
I’ve asked MEMA, the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, to work in partnership with the University of Maryland’s Center for Health and Homeland Security, to launch a statewide effort to work with local governments to find out what resources they might need, and to work with businesses and non-profits to find out what resources they can provide, and to try to broaden and expand our partnerships.
For those of you who are here on behalf of businesses or non-profits, I hope that you will visit MEMA’s website (www.mema.state.md.us) and send us some information on what you might be able to offer during an emergency situation. We’ll use this information to help build partnerships that we can use to ensure that our State is prepared and protected.
For our colleagues in local government I’d like to ask you to work with MEMA and your partners in state government to identify the resources you’re already aware of that you think might be able to be expanded elsewhere, the resource gaps you have and are looking to fill, and how we can better coordinate and leverage everyone’s capabilities. A letter to your director of emergency management from Richard Muth, the Director of MEMA, asking for your help, is in the mail.
Before I close, I want to mention that we are going to be able to use part of a $2.68 million grant that we are receiving from the federal Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to support these Civic Guard initiatives. We are very fortunate to have strong partners in the Obama Administration who share our homeland security priorities.
Conclusion
Thomas Aquinas wrote that “any seeker of a higher truth, or of God, must eventually and inevitably return to the idea of community.” An idea echoed by Dr. King, when he said “we are bound together in a web of mutuality.”
As Marylanders, we have always understood a higher truth – that we progress as a people on the strength, not the weakness of our neighbors. It is a truth that builds trust and community; a truth that proclaims the dignity of every individual; a truth that affirms our own responsibility to advance the common good; a truth that affirms that sense in our soul that there is a unity to spirit and matter, and that what we do in our own lifetimes does matter.
A community, not a crowd.
Thank you for stepping forward and embracing the call to help protect and prepare our State.
