276 Quotes by Michael Chertoff

If you start to plan in an emergency, you're not planning, you're improvising,

One of the first things we must do is retool FEMA and enhance this vital agency's capabilities so that it can fulfill its historic and critical mission of supporting response and recovery,

While it is very important to focus an enormous amount of attention and effort on what is going on here, we can't afford to let our guard down in respect to other threats that might happen,

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.

We need to build that capability in FEMA,

If we get a wild bird or even a domestic chicken that gets infected with avian flu, we're going to be able to deal with it, because we've got a lot of experience with that.

Chief Paulison has over 30 years of experience in emergency management, working his way up the ranks from firefighter to chief of the Miami-Dade County fire and rescue department,

I have directed Mike Brown to return to administering FEMA nationally,

We will have time to go back and do an after-action report, but the time right now is to look at what the enormous tasks ahead are, ... Meet the Press.