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There are no federal laws that establish minimum security standards at chemical facilities. Basic measures such as posting warning signs and fencing, controlling access and maintaining 24-hour surveillance are required for only 21% of the 15,000 sites that store large quantities of hazardous materials. Chemical railcars routinely sit parked for extended periods near residential areas or are shipped through the heart of urban centers. Each week shipments of such substances as deadly chloride are carried on slow-moving trains that pass within a few hundred yards of Capitol Hill in Washington. Chemical barges that move up and down America's inland waterways are unmonitored. It is the very ubiquity of the U.S. chemical industry that gives it potential to be a serious source of national alarm.
BIOWEAPONS: LOCALLY UNPREPARED
The Bush administration is putting in place a system called BioWatch, which involves installing and monitoring a nationwide set of air sensors to check for the presence of smallpox, anthrax and other pathogens. The Federal Government is also in the early stages of developing a public-health surveillance system built on monitoring the health databases of eight major cities for signs of disease outbreak. Finally, the Strategic National Stockpile has been boosted so adequate medications can be rushed to designated sites within 12 hours.
These are positive steps, but as with so many of our homeland-security efforts, they come with too few resources to address the need. Surveillance systems should be up and running in all our major metropolitan areas. Americans are always on the move. If a biological weapon is released in an urban area that is not being monitored, a contagious disease could spread into multiple states before the first alarm is sounded.
Even if a bio-attack is detected early and the federal stockpile of medications is shipped to the airport of the targeted city right away, our troubles are still not over. According to a study of emergency responses to a hypothetical anthrax attack, completed in 2003 by operations researchers Lawrence Wein, David Craft and Edward Kaplan, the release of just 2 lbs. of weapons-grade anthrax dispersed into the air from a tall building in an American city could result in more than 120,000 deaths. The reason for this huge death toll is that the distribution of antibiotics at "street level" would be too slow to treat victims early enough, and once people developed symptoms, they would overwhelm the capabilities of medical facilities. These findings were confirmed in a classified exercise run by the Federal Government in the fall of 2003.
WHY WE NEED TO ACT NOW
Over the past few years, I have traveled across America speaking to audiences candidly about our national state of insecurity. Initially I approached the enterprise with some trepidation, given that my message was unsettling. But it became clear that people want to hear the facts, however alarming. Even more encouraging has been the extent to which everyday people have expressed their sincere desire to be helpful in some way.