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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Chertoff visits ports, levees
Homeland security chief speaks about thwarted Dubai deal, state's preparedness
- John Wildermuth and Greg Lucas, Chronicle Political Writers
Saturday, March 18, 2006



The nation's homeland security chief said Friday that a Dubai company's proposed takeover of operations at six U.S. ports would have had no effect on the safety of the country's waterfronts despite the political opposition to the deal.

"We don't outsource our security," Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security, said to the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco.

The Coast Guard reviews all the security plans and has the final say on what ships and cargo are allowed in the United States -- regardless of who operates the ports, he said.

"We have a layered defense in depth," Chertoff said. Before it leaves the harbor, and often before it leaves a foreign port, "all cargo is thoroughly screened and vetted and, if necessary, physically inspected."

None of that would have changed had Dubai Ports World, a United Arab Emirates-owned company, taken over operations from a British firm at six U.S. ports including New York. The deal was scuttled after intense opposition from Congress.

Chertoff, during a morning visit to the busy Port of Oakland, saw a demonstration of the towering radiation portal monitors that every outbound cargo container has to pass through.

Oakland was the first U.S. port to screen all cargo for radiation, but the rest of the country soon will be following suit, the secretary said.

Earlier in the day, Chertoff inspected the state's aging levees with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He then flew from Sacramento on a Coast Guard helicopter, which gave him a look at the Bay Area refineries and the mothball fleet on Suisun Bay before landing in Oakland. After his visit, he boarded the Coast Guard cutter Pike for a waterside view of the port and a trip to San Francisco.

Chertoff visited California at Schwarzenegger's request after meeting with the Republican governor two weeks ago in Washington, D.C.

Schwarzenegger wanted Chertoff to see firsthand the need to swiftly repair and strengthen the Central Valley's 1,600 miles of levees to avert -- in a natural disaster such as an earthquake -- flooding like hit New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

But while Chertoff vowed to treat the rehabilitation and strengthening of the levees as a high priority, he stopped short of saying the federal government would declare a state of emergency, as Schwarzenegger has done on the state level.

Generally a federal emergency declaration deals with an event that's either happened or will happen in a few days, the secretary said.

Chertoff's reluctance to guarantee federal help for the levees didn't sit well with Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles.

"California needs money from the Bush administration for levee repairs, not a photo op," Núñez said in a statement. "Secretary Chertoff doesn't appear to have learned anything from Katrina by coming to California empty-handed."

Chertoff heard more complaints when his speech to the Commonwealth Club at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco was interrupted twice by hecklers critical of the Bush administration. Both were removed from the ballroom by security personnel.

The secretary warned against expecting too much of government, which will always need time to respond to any emergency.

Hurricane Katrina, for example, completely overwhelmed the capabilities of the state and federal government, he said. It devastated an area the size of Great Britain, forced one of the biggest evacuations in U.S. history and left more debris than 1992's Hurricane Andrew and the Sept. 11 attacks combined.

"The burden of emergency response will never be placed entirely on the government,'' Chertoff said. "Able-bodied individuals who are capable of providing for their own rescue must do so."

He stressed the need for people to prepare for the inevitable natural disaster so they don't have to depend on instant help from the government. Web sites such as Homeland Security's www.ready.gov and San Francisco's www.72hours.org provide the type of emergency preparedness information people need.

"Relief isn't going to happen in an hour," Chertoff said. "For the first 24 to 48 hours, people may have to be quite self-reliant."

Homeland security is always a series of tradeoffs, whether it's dealing with disasters or terrorists, the secretary said.

"We can't eliminate every disaster or threat. We can't eliminate all risks," he said. "Not without destroying the country, our civil liberties or our quality of life."

It's impossible to promise that the government "can make sure that some bad person never gets into a building," Chertoff said. "To deliver on that promise, I would have to make this country unlivable."

People have to understand that there are always hard choices that have to be made, and sometimes none of the choices are good ones, he said.

"We're trying to build a (security) system we can live with, because it's clear to me we're going to have to live with this for a long time," Chertoff said. "If I wanted to be able to declare victory and go home, this is absolutely the wrong job."