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Lack of Emergency Planning Worries D.C. Officials
U.S. Homeland Security Department and law enforcement officials said that Washington, D.C., does not have a comprehensive plan to inform residents of what do to during a large-scale emergency, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 24). The region is particularly vulnerable to a surprise terrorist attack, according to officials. “What we lack is a coordinated public information system in the event of a major incident,” said David Snyder of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' homeland security task force. “What we need is a system that will function instantaneously and automatically every time. … That doesn't exist now.” Officials can’t be sure of what sort of event might occur. Responding to a tornado would be different than dealing with a WMD attack by terrorists, according to the Post. Officials in Washington are concerned about how the federal government would respond to an event similar to Hurricane Katrina. “For four years, we've been hearing from the feds that they are going to take charge so we can respond to any catastrophe that comes our way,” said Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan. “And here's the first major test, and it's a failure. … I've lost confidence in [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] to come in and be part of the solution.” Evacuation plans for the region have been planned and tested. More than 2,500 federal workers went to more than 100 secret locations last year in the first test of how to keep the government running after a catastrophic terrorist attack. Area hospitals have also been preparing for an attack, adding isolation rooms for highly contagious patients and staffing experts to treat them, the Post reported. Local governments have established vaccination sites and shelters for evacuees as well. The District of Columbia government has its own response plan, according to the Post. However, most planning has been focused on the period immediately following a disaster, said Washington Transportation Director Dan Tangherlini. “What happens on day two and day three and day four?” he said. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said tests of the emergency management system prove that the city is not prepared. “The tests we've had do not inspire confidence,” she said. Washington recently tested its evacuation plans for the first time. Following fireworks on July 4, hundreds of thousands of people were directed to seven evacuation routes. Problems discovered during the test include: traffic signals not timed properly; troubles with Transportation Department radios; questions about responsibility; and lack of communication between officials and the public, the Post reported. Tangherlini said despite these problems the test provided valuable information. “There were some glitches,” he said. “But if we hadn't tested, we wouldn't have known. We made a lot of progress.” The 37 percent of D.C. households without a car is of concern to Tangherlini. The city is working on a “walk-out” plan for people without cars to get assistance, but fears that these gathering places could become terrorist targets are of concern. Tangherlini is also concerned that evacuation planning is taking too much time. He and other officials said that staying put after a chemical or radiological attack might be the best option. The city plans to review emergency response plans in the coming weeks. However, Norton fears that the lack of warning of a terrorist attack could make planning difficult. “Osama will not give us two days' notice,” she said (Horwitz/Davenport, Washington Post, Sept. 11). New York also lacks a comprehensive evacuation plan for its 8 million inhabitants, the New York Times reported yesterday. “It would not be easy and it would not be pretty,” said Jerome Hauer, the city's former emergency management director. Evacuation plans developed during the Cold War called for using barges and other vessels on the East River. Underground shelters underground were also considered. A mayoral panel concluded in 1955 that only 1 million people could be evacuated within an hour. “Until more efficient use of transportation and more than one hour's warning can be assured, about 3 million people, or 37 percent of the city’s 8 million population, might be balked in any attempt to escape the target area except by walking,” the panel found. Today, officials have developed escape routes from vulnerable neighborhoods, can mobilize a fleet of buses and have planned for contingencies like flooded subway tunnels, according to the Times. “It's very important to have a sense of order if you have an evacuation and we are able to mass 37,000 cops in the neighborhoods that need it, where people are poor or infirm,” said New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. The city could evacuate 400,000 to 2 million people if a hurricane threatens, said Joseph Bruno, New York’s emergency management commissioner,. Early warning and better communications make this possible, according to the Times. “Would it be difficult to move two million people? Absolutely,” Bruno said. “I hope we never have to do it.” Evacuations of the entire city population would be an even more daunting a task, Bruno said. “We have plans for area evacuations, and if you take them to their logical conclusion an area could be the entire city of New York,” he said. “Those are doomsday type things, a nuclear attack. We're definitely not throwing our hands up. But it would be a catastrophic event that would be extremely difficult for New York City to have to deal with.” When asked how long it would take to evacuate the city, Bruno said, “I wouldn't even hazard a guess.” Hauer said that a nuclear explosion would complicate evacuations plans because of lingering radioactivity. “Rescue workers might, without any idea of protection, at the end of the day choose to stay out of the plume and I can't blame them,” he said. “Obviously, there'd be a lot of self-evacuation” similar to workers’ commutes in and out of the city (Sam Roberts, New York Times, Sept. 11). Elsewhere, officials in Cleveland are concerned that law enforcement personnel lack the training to respond to a terrorist strike, the Akron Beacon Journal reported yesterday. “You know how much terrorism training I've been given since coming onto the force (years ago)? Zero,” said a Cleveland beat cop. He said the only guidance he’s received is an electronic map with escape routes. The map is so small and complex that “I can't even figure it out, let alone tell everybody else what to do,” he said. A nuclear blast is unlikely, said Tom Stephens of SAIC, a scientific research firm who works on software that predicts fallout from a WMD attack. “It would be the toughest to pull off because of the technology required,” he said. “It's much cheaper for people to build the other types of weapons.” Stephens said an attack with a dirty bomb would be more likely to occur because the weapons are “just a bunch of radiological material blown up by a conventional bomb,” he said. A bomb like this could spread radiation over several city blocks, Stephens said (Bob Dyer, Akron Beacon Journal, Sept. 11).
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