Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani yesterday helped set in motion a regional public-private partnership to better prepare the lower Hudson Valley for emergencies like Hurricane Katrina or an incident at the Indian Point nuclear power plants.

"I call it relentless preparation," Giuliani told a group of about three dozen members of the Westchester County Association. "You are never too prepared."

Giuliani addressed the group in his role as head of Giuliani Partners, which has advised Indian Point and its owner, Entergy, about security for about two years.

Giuliani said when he took on the top job in the nation's largest city in 1994, he realized quickly that there were too many agencies with different responsibilities.

"I saw that emergency planning in New York City was not in the modern age," Giuliani told the breakfast meeting, held at the Westchester Country Club. "We had terrific people, but we really hadn't focused on planning for modern emergencies like terrorist attacks or biological or chemical attacks."

Officials from the Westchester County Association and the New York State Emergency Management Office said they were going to take the lead in the new effort to inventory resources from the public and private sectors and figure out ways to fill gaps in the region's emergency planning network.

"We're going to move forward and work together as a team, public and private industry, to get a regional plan together for catastrophic emergencies," said James Tuffey, director of the New York State Emergency Management Office.

Giuliani stressed that the meeting wasn't about Indian Point's emergency plans.

"This was about a regional plan for all emergencies, all hazards," Giuliani said after the meeting. "Indian Point is just one of 100 possibilities. What I said was maybe (the nuclear plants) can be a good motivator to figure out plans for all emergencies, because in a natural disaster, an attack, the same response is going to be necessary. And regional planning is the key to that."

The former mayor said having a group that works on emergency planning, including exercises and drills, and extends it beyond Westchester County, is crucial.

"It's even more important that you work things out in advance," Giuliani said. "The more multijurisdictional breakdowns there are, the more important it is to have thought through this in advance, talked through it, figured out how they're going to help each other."

Even with planning, there are things that will go wrong, the former mayor said. Evacuation plans are just one element of that.

"Recent evacuations like we've seen, you learn from. When we have to do one, it will go better than that, but with its own set of problems," Giuliani said.

William Mooney, the president of the Westchester County Association, a countywide business organization, said the initial meeting was to let key people meet one another and air their concerns.

"This is an opportunity to bring the public sector and private sector together, along with the expertise of people who have been through this," Mooney said. "If we can put together a regionalized plan, including Connecticut ... and begin to create that process of teamwork as it relates to security, that would be an awesome thing."

Mooney said the meeting, to allow a frank discussion, was not open to the press or public.

Officials from Giuliani Partners and the Westchester County Association asked a Journal News reporter to leave about 30 minutes into the meeting, in the middle of Giuliani's remarks.

COURTESY OF THE JOURNAL NEWS

GREG CLARY-THE JOURNAL NEWS