On Sept. 11, as the mammoth blaze triggered by a hijacked airliner engulfed a section of the Pentagon, Maryland fire companies that rushed to the scene tried to communicate with their counterparts from Northern Virginia and the District Columbia.
But they couldn't connect -- they were on different radio frequencies. And that's no unique occurrence: the same Tower of airspace Babel occurred when the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was blown up in 1995. Or when murderous shooting broke out at Columbine High School near Denver in 1999.
Whether terrorism or some other disaster, it's glaringly obvious: emergency personnel need to communicate. Where is more trouble erupting? Where should firefighters focus their efforts? Are their dangerous gases or nuclear material floating about? Where are the injured who are in need of instant transportation to hospitals?
America's thousands of "independent" local governments continue to act as if this were the 1950s and it's still OK to act in isolated fashion. Yet in an age of perils that encompass bio- chemical-, bomb blast- and nuclear-terrorism, lack of basic communications could cause thousands of us to die unnecessarily.
A critical message from Sept. 11 was surely: it's time we find ways to galvanize our metropolitian, regionwide responses to major threats. And it's not just radio freqencies. It's capacity to identify dangerous chemicals or bioagents released into the air or water supplies. It's deciding which units get equipped with biochemical masks or suits, antidote kits for nerve agents, supplies of CIPRO, command buses (roughly $500,000 each) to rush to disaster scenes. It's defense strategies for reservoirs, power plants, chemical factories, skyscrapers, airports, water supplies, computer networks.
Small wonder that Anthony Williams, Mayor of Washington, D.C. -- "a target rich environment," as he puts it, with facilities ranging from the Capitol and White House to nearby Pentagon and CIA headquarters -- finds intergovernmental cooperation the top anti-terrorism challenge. Example: getting the Washington region's 30 police departments -- federal, state, local -- working in unison.
Arnold Howitt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government defines terrorism preparedness as perhaps the toughest urban management challenge of our time -- at least as difficult as fighting terrorism on an international scale.
How does domestic terrorism preparedness connect our national aspirations with state leadership and then coordination in our metro regions? The job's tough for states alone; they deploy National Guards but their officials often sit in capitals up to hundreds of miles from a sudden terrorist incident. And it's tough for localities: central cities or strong counties may have skilled "first responder" teams, compared to rather primitive emergency management capacity in smaller cities. But an incident can pop up anywhere across a metro area.
Then there's the sticker shock of sophisticated emergency management devices, from those $500,000 command buses to protective suits to new radio equipment. Post-Sept. 11 wish lists in the Washington area alone total $2 billion. Even with federal help, localities will be heavily stressed. Well-conceived regional plans to share responsibilities and costs would save huge sums.
Joint training, joint investment, coordinated regional plans -- how do we get there? One idea -- nurtured by the recently formed Alliance for Regional Stewardship and by such figures as Camille Barnett, former city manager of Washington and Austin -- is a series of terrorism preparedness summits in the countrys 300-plus metro regions, Tom Ridge and his Office of Homeland Security could urge such summits and maybe provide seed funding. Ideally, the summits would include not just fire, police and health officials but center city mayors, county executives and officials from smaller cities. They would develop approaches jointly with business, non-profit and citizen groups in each region.
And the effort shouldn't bypass the states. The 50 state governors should regard regions as the logical action-delivery zones for their states terrorism preparedness and disaster planning. The governors -- 36 of whom have now set up anti-terrorism offices or task forces, according to Stateline.org -- could demonstrate commitment and interest by urging regional summits, preferably taking part in them personally.
The summits might kick off in the regions at greatest initial risk-- Washington, New York, Los Angeles, for example. They could then spread to regions across all states, with Ridge's office responsible for gathering up examples of the best practices that develop.
There's no guarantee all regional summits would lead to coherent, strong plans. But with local politicos and civic leaders in the same room, wrestling jointly with problems of the new terrorist era, debating with visiting state and federal officials, exposing the issues and potential solutions to media attention, the concept of joint regional responsibility for homeland security would inevitably get a big boost.
Regional, voluntary, public, urgent -- the prescription might be just right to start addressing the challenges of our post Sept. 11 world.
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