[iwar] [fc:HOMELAND.DEFENSE:.Homeland.Defense.Won't.Start.from.Scratch]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-28 16:20:40


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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 16:20:40 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:HOMELAND.DEFENSE:.Homeland.Defense.Won't.Start.from.Scratch]
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HOMELAND DEFENSE: Homeland Defense Won't Start from Scratch
By Andrew Schneider Sept. 27, 2001

State and local officials looking to beef up efforts to protect citizens
and workers from future terrorist attacks and other emergencies will
have plenty of solid resources to draw on.  Many of these have operated
quietly until now-but no more.  Suddenly, they have everybody's
attention. 

One model well worth a look is Los Angeles County's Terrorism Early
Warning Group.  Created in the wake of a series of anthrax poison scares
in late 1998, it is a well-coordinated collaboration of a number of
public and private entities aimed at providing a rapid and effective
first response.  It includes large-scale evacuation procedures and other
forms of consequence management. 

The group includes the city and county police and fire departments, the
California Office of Emergency Services and the Los Angeles field office
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation plus a dozen other local, federal
and nongovernmental bodies.  It is coordinated by Sgt.  John Sullivan of
the LA County Sheriff's Department. 

Moreover, the LA group is plugged into a network of science and medical
experts that can be tapped at moment's notice for advice.  The network
includes experts at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National
Laboratories and the U.S.  Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. 

Already, San Diego, Sacramento and Orange County, Calif., are in various
stages of developing similar teams based on the LA model.  Seattle and
Salt Lake City plus the states of New Mexico, South Carolina and
Delaware also are studying what LA can teach them. 

Another program geared toward helping cities jump-start their civil
defense teams-particularly as they deal with chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons-is the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici
Domestic Preparedness Program. 

The program, launched as an amendment to the National Defense
Authorization Act for fiscal year 1997, mandated Defense Department
training for first responders in 157 cities and counties around the
country.  Significantly, among the first cities to receive training
under the program were New York City, Washington, D.C.  and Los Angeles. 
All participating cities and counties are scheduled to complete training
by the end of this year.  The program also subsidizes the purchase of
personal protection, decontamination and detection equipment. 

Multistate compacts can also help to fill emergency response gaps,
particularly when one member's first responders are overwhelmed by the
demand an attack places on its personnel or supplies.  The Emergency
Management Assistance Compact provides a legal framework for such mutual
aid among 42 member states and two member territories.  A smaller New
England and Eastern Canada Mutual Assistance Compact also binds the six
states and five provinces of that region. 

Look for such compacts to be expanded to include areas where domestic
preparedness falls considerably short.  Roughly half the nation's
smaller cities and towns-those with populations of less than
100,000-have no terrorism response and prevention plans in place, and
more than half have had no antiterrorist training.  Besides allying
themselves with larger regional neighbors, many such areas will also
receive more federal funding to bolster their defenses. 

The Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Ala., will get a big
boost.  Started in 1998, the center teaches police officers,
firefighters and health care providers on issues from how to deal with
bombs and toxic weapons to how to handle large numbers of patients in
emergency hospital situations.  Up until now, it has been largely
unnoticed and sparsely attended.  Not anymore.  Congress will likely
double its budget to $30 million next year, and enrollment is expected
to quadruple to 10,000. 

There will be an expanded role in civil defense for the military as
well.  Military police and National Guard units already supplement local
law enforcement for security and support operations in the aftermath of
a terrorist attack that involves a "conventional" explosion.  They'll
play a much larger part, though, in the event of a CBRN attack, taking
the lead in decontaminating large numbers of people and providing
additional medical care and facilities to supplement local hospitals. 

Likewise, first responders-police, firefighters, emergency medical
technicians and local officials-will themselves start to emulate
intelligence services and the military.  Local emergency operations
centers will perform much the same way as an army's general staff. 
Their responsibilities will range from stepping up human intelligence at
the local level-possibly at the expense of some loss of privacy by
citizens-to developing operational plans for responding to CBRN attacks
and threats to water infrastructure and food supplies. 

They'll also provide operational intelligence and analysis to the
official commanding the emergency response as that emergency unfolds. 
And they'll need to do all this while coordinating the efforts of their
separate agencies to function as a single unit-in and of itself, not an
easy task. 

Local employers should not take anything for granted.  Often civil
support planning overlooks what local businesses can bring to the table. 
The best way for companies to stay in the loop is to designate someone
at the firm to coordinate emergency efforts and to make sure that person
stays in touch with the local public response team coordinators. 

Researcher-Reporter: Nicole Bonnell

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