Crisis of Complacency

Crisis of Complacency
Came across this articlethe other week. The author, Anthony L. Kimery, writes about the lack of emergency preparedness in general and of particular concern is; “that federal and state governments aren’t paying nearly enough attention to the steady deterioration of emergency medical care across the nation – the very medical care that will be needed in the event of a mass casualty catastrophe.” I don’t know if I agree that the federal and state governments aren’t paying enough attention. Rather, I think the economic environment prohibits being focused on “what if” instead of the “right now”. The big three automakers aren’t selling enough cars so they are asking for a federal bailout. What this really means though is no one is buying which in turn means no tax revenue. Without sufficient tax revenues, the federal and state governments don’t have to money to subsidize emergency medical care.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that less 1/3 of the population is ready for an emergency. According to the CDC, US citizens are “too busy, too distracted, or too frightened to plan carefully for a natural disaster, disease outbreak, or local catastrophe.” A few years ago, everyone was preparing for the avian flu and now hardly anyone mentions “bird flu” anymore. People may remember last decade all of the doomsday predictions associated with the “Y2K” scare. It is human nature to start reacting to a new threat but if that threat does not materialize than our attention turns to other issues. Complacency has always been the challenge for state and local officials. Civil Defense had to constantly remind citizens how to respond in the event of a nuclear attack. Although those drills look clichéd now, the principle of constantly reminding people is as valid as it was 50 years ago.
Right now it seems unrealistic to encourage people to worry about a potential flu pandemic when people are much more concerned about their own jobs. In Wilmington, it looks like close to 10,000 jobs will be lost. In Hamilton County, several hundred jobs may be lost due to budgetary constraints.
Anthony concludes his article with a turn on the old Total Quality Management phrase, “people need to understand the consequences of NOT being prepared.” Too much information has left people throwing up their arms in frustration or simply dismissing these studies as the latest Y2K. How then should we proceed? I suggest going back to the Civil Defense model but instead of surviving a nuclear attack preparing focus on basic emergency preparedness. Much as emergency managers are getting away from scenario based training and favor the “all-hazards approach”, we need to be prepared for all emergencies not just the most recent one.

e-Justice Blog

I received a note from e-Justice blog which appears to be a new blog covering a range of topics from cyber law to personal security. The blog is part of the Criminal Justice USA.com website. The authors are interested in helping people to become more pro-active and better informed citizens. They just compiled a listing of the Top 50 Homeland Security blogs and Losantiville is one. Thanks for including my blog!

Soft Targets

Soft targets are an especially challenging situation for safety and security experts to protect. Soft targets are basically any facility or location that may be attacked by a terrorist but lacks the surveillance and security systems to be considered hardened (such as a military base or nuclear power plant). The recent shootings in Omaha and Colorado Springs brought all of this to mind the other day. We have been so focused on protecting targets of national significance (Wall Street, the Hoover Dam, the Statue of Liberty, the Sears Tower, etc.) we tend to overlook other targets of opportunity for a terrorist to attack. To illustrate my point, allow me to use the city of Dayton which is about 50 miles north of Cincinnati with a population of around 160,000. At first look, it doesn’t appear to be much of a target for a terrorist with its relatively small population and distance away from a major metropolitan area such as Chicago or New York. However, there are many reasons why Dayton (and other small or medium sized cities) could become the next target for a terrorist attack.

Dayton hosts several festivals in its downtown area around the Five Rivers MetroPark each year. Thousands of people stroll along the streets and river during the Spring and Summer months walking amongst city streets that have been blocked off. Such a large mass of people out in the open and defended by a relatively small police force could be attacked with any number of chemical or biological agents. The terrorist motive of course is to induce panic so the weapon doesn’t even have to be a real chemical or biological agent as long as the populace becomes afraid and chaos ensues. Despite its small size Dayton has two major universities, Wright State University to the east and University of Dayton located immediately south of the downtown. The combined student enrollment of the two universities is over 20,000. Colleges and universities are designed to be open and thus are especially susceptible to attack. We saw earlier this year what one lone gunmen can do at Virginia Tech, it would not take much to launch a more concerted effort to produce even higher casualties at either of the Dayton campuses. The would-be terrorist need not be successful in executing the attack in order to be effective. The fear and panic caused by what MIGHT happen could seriously cripple university life for many weeks. Many cities such as Dayton have a minor league baseball team. Fifth Third Field (there is also a ballpark by the same name in Toledo) seats over 7,000 fans and is located just north of the downtown. It would not be difficult to fly a small aircraft either over the crowd (with the intent of dropping some type of weapon on to the field) or to actually fly the aircraft into the stands. Of course, I have intentionally left the biggest target in the Dayton area until last. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has a combined workforce population of over 13,000 according to latest U.S. Census figures. Many large military installations exist near small communities (Offut AFB near Omaha or Scott AFB near Belleville, IL come to mind).

The natural tendency is to assume the attack will be directed at the base. However, as most military installations are hardened with a highly trained security force and sophisticated surveillance systems other targets associated with the base are much easier to attack. Rather than go after the base itself, a potential terrorist may target a neighborhood with a large base population. Most base personnel have DoD decals (or other military decals) on their windshields making it easy to identify large concentrations of military families. Launching an attack against a neighborhood presents few deterrents compared to attacking a military installation. A frightening scenario related to attacking a neighborhood is to target a school with a large population of children whose parents work on base. It is not feasible to hardened either of these targets to the degree of a military base nor would most citizens want to live on a military styled compound.

What makes any of these attacks especially alarming is the size of Dayton. A quick search on Google shows only four major hospitals in the Dayton area (not including the hospital on Wright-Patterson). A terrorist attack that produces multiple casualties could quickly overwhelm the medical treatment facilities in the Dayton area. Fifth Third Field alone could produce several thousands casualties in the event of a terrorist attack during a game. The efforts for first responders to treat and transport all of the casualties out of the ballpark would take hours. The traffic problems could grid-lock the city for many more hours or even days. Merely the threat of an attack could create many problems for the city. Funding for homeland security is not sufficient to deal with all of these potential targets and Dayton has to compete with targets in the six other major cities in Ohio.

Department of Homeland Security, as well as other federal agencies, take the position that protecting soft targets is strictly a state or local responsibility. Those familiar with FEMA guidance for dealing with the avian flu know not to expect any assistance from agencies outside the state, basically each state will be on their own. Protection of soft targets in areas outside of New York or Washington, D.C. are in a similar situation, namely the federal government is not resourced to cover every potential soft target. Dayton and other similarly sized cities have multiple targets that could be the subject of attack, yet their national significance is such that little in the way of federal assistance can be expected. More than ever, cities like Dayton need to collaborate with other cities in developing strategies to best prepare and protect their residents from terrorist attacks. Local law enforcement agencies in conjunction with citizens are perhaps the strongest preventive mechanism available to a city. Police officers and the citizens they protect know who belongs in the area and who doesn’t. Citizens know when people in the neighborhood are up to suspicious behavior or activities. Building and fostering this cooperation isn’t always easy. In many communities relations between police officers and local citizens are poor. Even in those neighborhoods were police and citizens cooperate, there is still a stigma of “snitching” to the law or fear of retribution should they report suspicious activity to the police. Fire and EMS personnel are also becoming part of the eyes and ears of counter-terrorism. Exactly because they aren’t law enforcement, fire and EMS personnel may learn of suspicious activity which can they be used to prevent an attack.

All of this of course is pointless without a strategy to coordinate all of these agencies efforts along with a mechanism to share the information. Many states now have intelligence fusion centers to cross-reference information from multiple agencies within the state. The centers are an important step in creating an environment where information can be shared. The personnel in these centers are highly trained but even so are unable (usually) to add the local perspective to a particular report. Thus it is so critical to develop and enhance the cooperation at the local level between citizens and responding agencies. They are the ones who will first note a change in behavior or activity. None of this will matter though if the information isn’t used to help citizens prepare to deter or protect themselves from an attack. Virginia Tech did not have a strategy in place to quickly inform students that a shooter was on a rampage and such a strategy may have prevented additional deaths. Similarly a community has to have a way to communicate a potential threat exists and must communicate to the residents what steps to take to prevent or reduce the likelihood of attack. City officials of course may be reluctant to share information for fear of creating a panic and most likely this would occur if residents have not been involved with the process previously. There are many challenges to implementing a cooperative strategy between local government and residents on this level. The education and training to make this actually work would have to be well-planned out and continuous. There are many challenges to such a strategy and it may ultimately prove too difficult to implement in some cities. However, if the city officials accept the threat to their soft targets than in becomes a matter of principle and honor to do something about it. When you think about it, this isn’t much different than what Civil Defense was used for back in the 1950’s although this will be a much more pro-active model with the goal of not just surviving an attack but outright prevention.

Civil Defense

While today most people associate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with disaster relief, one of the agencies that formed FEMA was the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. The DCPA Coordinated and directed federal, state, and local civil defense program activities, including fallout shelters; chemical, biological, and radiological warfare defense; emergency communications and warning systems; post-attack assistance and damage assessment; preparedness planning; and government continuity. Under President Carter, FEMA shed its civil defense role for a more aggressive role in disaster response. Almost 25 years later, FEMA became part of the Department of Homeland Security which is challenged with some of the same responsibilities as the former DCPA.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, civil defense was an effort to prepare citizens to survive a military attack. In many countries, civil defense is usually based around a fire brigade. Citizens became concerned about another sneak attack on U.S. soil after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In 1942 President Roosevelt created the Office of Civilian Defense (which in 1972 would become DCPA). Civil defense in the U.S. during WWII was conducted by volunteers who, for example, made sure their neighbors had their lights off during mock air raids. Thousands of chapters across the country were formed due to the exceptionally high sense of volunteerism that was focused on winning the war. After the WWII, it would have seemed that the reasons for civil defense would have been eliminated but this wasn’t the case.

The Soviet Union did not waste any time catching up the U.S. in detonating its first nuclear weapon. The Korean War was seen by many as a prelude to all out war with the Soviet Union. Civil defense evolved into preparing citizens for surviving and the aftermath of a nuclear attack. The Eisenhower administration distributed survival information and created a Federal Civil Defense Administration (later the Office of Civil Defense) to educate the public about protection. Survival literature was written primarily for a suburban audience since it was assumed that cities would be targets and most urban dwellers would not survive. Because Cincinnati was an industrial giant (General Electric jet engine manufacturing, Cincinnati Milacron machine tool, etc) and was located near Wright Patterson AFB, southwestern Ohio would be a likely bomb target. In addition to these targets, many Ohioans have only recently learned of the large part National Cash Register (NCR) of Dayton played in a super-secret project to build the machines that were used to break the German “Enigma” machine.

Civil defense is mostly associated with “duck and cover” movies used to train school children. Survival manuals stated citizens could emerge from fallout shelters after two weeks. Civil Defense suggested plans for these structures in basements, converted cisterns, or other below ground surfaces. Suggested equipment included air filtering systems, generators, chemical toilets, waste disposal bags, water storage drums, cots or beds, Geiger counters, portable radios, first aid kits, auxiliary escape hatches, and a variety of foodstuffs - including "survival biscuits". More elaborate family foxholes had heat and air conditioning units. Some owners of fallout shelters kept guns inside--to stop unwanted intruders or looters. In Cincinnati, private bunkers existed within the Village on Kugler Mill, Given, Redbirdhollow, Councilrock, and Indian Hill Roads. Some were architect-designed, but many residents simply kept a basement corner supplied. These were based in part on designs from the Federal Civil Defense Administration (as the Office of Civilian Defense was known during the 1950’s.

Cincinnati had plans during the 1920’s to build an underground subway system and hired a Chicago transit planner to design the system. Issues in obtaining the necessary right-of-way from adjacent cities (Cincinnati proper is surrounding by much smaller cities including St Bernard, Norwood, Elmwood Place) Two miles were finally constructed but no track was ever laid. Those familiar with Cincinnati can imagine the route that follows Central Parkway along the I-75 corridor up to what is now the Norwood Later. The line would have come back down to what is now I-71 and ending at Fourth Street. The tunnels came back into prominence as part of a civil defense plan to shelter citizens. It thought the unused subway tunnels in Cincinnati would make a perfect underground fallout shelter. In the early 60's the federal government saw fit to renovate a particular station and install various items of equipment - toilet facilities, water facilities, heating facilities, etc. -so that it could be utilized by federal personnel in the event the need was necessary, and also, for both the county government and city government in the event of a disaster situation involving fallout. Government officials would assemble in the shelter facility and direct activities.

By 1958, it was widely believed that the Soviet Union had a nuclear arsenal equal to that of the United States which caused civil defense to become even more of a priority. The Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization under President John F. Kennedy, who believed in and advocated civil defense. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in October of 1962, resulted in a rapid, three-month program to improve civil defense. In autumn 1961, President Kennedy urged Americans to build the protective structures at the height of the Berlin Wall Crisis. Indian Hill's Village Council, noting "the wisdom of providing protection from radioactive fallout", considered establishing community shelters in both existing and proposed structures. The Miami Rd. Water Tower and Drake Rd. Elementary School were considered adaptable to house 600 persons each. The proposed I.H. High School and CCDS auditorium might be expanded (at $200,000 cost) to include basements to accommodate 2600 people. A Citizen's Committee reviewed the proposals; but, when it became clear that funding was not available, Council deferred action.

By the mid-1960's American's fears about the bomb lessened. As arms controls talks and a limited nuclear test ban eased tensions, plans for building additional public shelters were postponed, and builders received fewer inquiries for private ones. Shelters were converted to wine cellars, mushroom gardens, recreation rooms, or storage areas. The underground quarters that remain in the Village are relics of the Cold War era. Today civil defense is more commonly referred to as homeland security with more of an emphasis on surviving terrorist attacks versus nuclear attacks. While fallout shelters may no longer be relevant, the basic tenet of civil defense in preparing citizens to survive an attack is perhaps more relevant than ever.