Secretary Thanks Firefighters, Emphasizes Preparedness

Chertoff's remarks follow:

Secretary Chertoff: Thank you very much. I want to thank Chief Westermann for that introduction. You know, whenever you hear people introduce you and go over your background, even when you've had as many jobs as I have had, it's a little bit like a walk down memory lane. And, of course, nothing is ever lost nowadays.

I was chagrined to see a picture dating back to 1985 in the news yesterday in connection with a story about Rudy Giuliani and the fact that the bosses of the Mafia Commission had been unhappy about the fact that we prosecuted them. And since I actually tried the Commission case, there was a picture of me 20 years ago, 21 years ago, and I have to tell you, it was kind of a rude shock.

(Laughter.)

Secretary Chertoff: I think you all know what that's like. So I appreciate that. I appreciate Fire Administrator Cade addressing you. I was on the phone with him when he was in California, we literally passed each other over the last couple of days as I went out and came back and he went out again. And, of course, you know, Chief Paulison has been out there since we flew out early in the week, and I think he'll be coming back quickly.

As we contemplate what is going on in California, it's an occasion for us to have renewed appreciation for the work that you do and the firefighters do under very demanding and difficult circumstances.

This organization has been involved in saving lives and improving public safety for more than 130 years. You also represent an exceptionally fine group of men and women who put their lives on the line and work themselves to exhaustion in dealing with some of the greatest challenges that we face in this country.

And, as is often said, but not too often said, firefighters rush in when everybody's running out. And that is certainly true with what we have seen in California, where there's an unprecedented response effort.

I thought what I would do is maybe begin, before I get into the regular prepared part of the speech, to talk a little bit about what I saw and what's going on out in Southern California. This has been truly a remarkable team effort of firefighters and responders at the local, state and federal level, really since this weekend when the Santa Ana winds picked up, and of course as you know, particularly on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, we had very high winds that made fighting the fire extremely challenging.

From the very beginning, the Interagency Fire Center, which is a joint federal, state coordinating entity that helps to make sure we can get firefighting assets, including air assets, onto the scene of major fires, they were on top of this over the weekend.

And I asked somebody to kind of pull some of the statistics, and it