How Disaster-Ready Are We?

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Terrorist Attacks
One of the conclusions of the 9/11 investigations was that in a major disaster, nothing is as important as the ability to communicate. This is not just a technical issue: just as they need interoperable radio systems, first responders also need to know and trust each other. That's a particular challenge in Washington, D.C., area, where a major disaster would be dealt with by two state governments, police and fire departments from 18 jurisdictions, and more than 40 federal police agencies and security services. Two years ago, the Government Accountability Office asked the Department of Homeland Security to produce a strategic plan for coordinating the preparations of the roughly 300 entities that might respond to a disaster. In congressional testimony last week, officials said they hoped to have the plan completed by August — although over $500 million has already been appropriated to upgrade the region's emergency response capability.

"The good news is that we have a communications system in place among the agencies, we have better equipment to train responders and we have a greater habit of working together than we did five years ago," says David Snyder, a Falls Church, Va., councilman who serves on the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' homeland security task force. "The problem is that the linkages between these different systems and agencies are extremely weak."

Recent events have underscored his point: last May, top D.C. officials didn't learn a Cessna was intruding into their airspace until they saw it on CNN; last July 4, a test of the downtown emergency evacuation plan after the fireworks found that traffic signals didn't switch to evacuation timing, some federal radios weren't charged and some officials didn't have a clear sense of their responsibilities. Local officials say they fixed the problems afterwards. But as Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district's congressional delegate, puts it: "You wonder how many afterwards there are going to have to be."

What Can You Do?
It's now the mantra of emergency management officials everywhere: every household should have enough water, food and other supplies to last at least three days, as well as a family reunion and communication plan. And yet a 2005 survey by Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness found that only 29% of Americans had some or all the major elements of an emergency plan.

"People should not stop at the recommendations to stock up with food and water," says Monica Schoch-Spana, senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Biosecurity. "Individuals should be calling the hospitals that they rely on and asking them, do you have a pandemic flu contingency plan in place? People need to start putting more pressure on the institutions that we rely on to protect us."

They also need to learn how to protect themselves when those institutions can't. Since 1993, the federal government's Community Emergency Response Team program has trained civilians to be auxiliary first responders — a formalized, more effective version of the Manhattan businessmen who loosened their ties and directed traffic during the 2003 blackout. The program is now available in more than 2000 jurisdictions. "If the people in Louisiana had been better educated," says RAND consultant Glenn Melnick, "the loss of property would have been the same, but we would have lost a lot fewer lives."

With reporting by Amanda Ripley and Douglas Waller / Washington and Elisabeth Kauffman / Nashville

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