popular logistics

Excerpts from The Disaster Accountability Project’s comments on the National Response Framework:

• “The NRF inadequately considers the needs of non-English speakers who may be foreign visitors or immigrants… Make the draft NRF readily available in Spanish and other languages spoken by a substantial portion of the population”

• “Make civil service positions less vulnerable to political pressures from above by embracing meaningful whistle-blower protections for all emergency managers, including those with security clearances; and provide an effective and supportive mechanism for receiving disclosures of inadequacies in emergency planning, exercising and response.”

• ” ‘Framework’ is indeed a more accurate name for this product ; but it is not entirely accurate. What is needed is a different product - a plan, not a name change.”

• “The description of the FEMA Director and DHS Secretary’s responsibilities conflicts with requirements of the Post Katrina Reform Act.”

• “Shifting NRF implementation to the DHS Secretary is not consistent with the intent of Congress as described in the Post Katrina Reform Act…The head of FEMA and not the DHS Secretary should be in charge of coordinating federal emergency response.”

• “Some ESF functions may be inappropriately combined, partitioned or privatized.”

• “Not all ‘lessons learned’ are publicly reported or followed up with changes to plans. For example, as TOPOFF 4 prepares to being, the TOPOFF III after-action report still has not been issued.”

• “Federal exercises frequently ignore recovery or give it lip service if addressed at all… Ensure that adequate exercise time is allowed to cover long-term recovery issues in reasonable detail.”

• “Logic suggests that the FEMA Administrator would be the coordinator of the federal response, not the DHS Secretary’s advisor… The roles of the FEMA Director and Director of Operations Coordination appear to conflict, calling to mind post-Katrina confusion.”

DAP release here. Link to Acrobat (.pdf) file of complete comments here.

If you care about these issues - and if you’re reading this, you probably do - the Disaster Accountability Project is asking good questions.

Disaster Accountability Project (main site)

Disaster Accountability Project (blog)

WMX has an appropriate response to what’s likely to be the latest edition of “security theatre” - this year’s TOPOFF exercise.

Our “premier terrorism preparedness exercise” is based on a dirty bomb threat?  And has been based on a dirty bomb threat for the last 8 years?

I’m only halfway kidding.  The United States has a lot of problems that, while they might not look as big as a “dirty bomb” going off, are a bit more pressing.  Case in point: 11 September was not a radiological, chemical or biological attack.

Future devastating attacks will be “black swans” (as John Robb calls them in Brave New War), attacks coming out of left field that are cheap and unexpected and targeted at infrastructure.  Why were the attacks of 11 September genius?  Hijackings had been around for decades by that point.  Dealing with them had become fairly old hat.

They were brilliant because they connected two things that people hadn’t connected before.  Who thinks of turning an airplane into a guided missile?  No one- until someone with great synthesis skills started turning over airplanes in their head.

The attacks on the Trade Center probably caused less casualties than a radiological attack would.  Why was that message chosen then?  Because it made people afraid to fly.  Because no one was thinking about defending against that kind of attack.  We’ve been preparing to respond to radiological emergencies for better than thirty years.

Wargaming programs like TOPOFF would be better off confronting “top officials” and first responders with something that they’ve never seen before.  Hit them with something like an attack on a power plant, or an oil refinery, or a bridge.  Attack the infrastructure.  This isn’t a new idea- it’s been around since John Warden’s The Air Campaign and we used it to toss Iraq in DESERT STORM.  Why do we assume that our enemies won’t be that smart?

WingmanX’s post here.

I’ll add that - as someone involved at the local level - in a city in which the Fire and Police departments didn’t do serious drills between the 1993 and 2001 WTC attacks - we need to spend money and energy on working-level drills. 

Or

• another example from Irwin Redlener - hospital evacuations - logistically complex - and under some circumstances, absolutely critical;
• evacuations of other institutions. For instance - the world’s largest prison - Riker’s Island - isn’t too far above sea level. In a flood, are we going to let prisoners drown?
• Attacks on pipelines - or other underground infrastructure

I think WingmanX may have stumbled across the bureaucratic tripwire of this rule: if we acknowledge a problem, we then must take responsibility for solving it.

According to Ellen Sullivan’s Associated Press piece, published on Firehouse.com

The nation is preparing for its biggest terrorism exercise ever later this month when three fictional “dirty bombs” go off and cripple transportation arteries in two major U.S. cities and Guam, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

Yet even as this drill begins, details from the previous national exercise held in 2005 have yet to be publicly released - information that’s supposed to help officials prepare for the next real attack.