Ounces of prevention

In Arlington County, Va., it appears that disaster has struck. Immediately, basic first aid is administered to victims, small fires are extinguished and fleeing residents are given direction. Quickly, the situation is contained. In the last year, scenes like those have occurred repeatedly throughout the nation. Yet the scene is not a real disaster, and the responders are not professionals, but rather a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) in training, one of more than 170 such volunteer, citizen-based teams across the country.

Although CERTs have been used nationwide since the early 1990s, they have played a greater role since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Coordinated nationally by the Washington, D.C.-based Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the CERT program also is training local governments to, in turn, train volunteers in their communities. Yet, because funding for the project comes from local sources, participation in the program is uneven. According to the FEMA Web site, some states, such as Connecticut, have just one registered CERT (serving New Canaan), while others have dozens (such as California and Florida).

Today, they are just one tool that local governments have used to prepare for homeland security emergencies. Increasingly, local governments are learning how to work together to leverage resources, increase communication and take advantage of new technology to protect themselves from terrorism. Despite that progress, however, several roadblocks — namely: funding shortfalls, interoperability challenges and technology learning curves — remain before the nation will be as prepared as it can be.

Waiting for funding

Emergency response funding is one of the biggest issues facing local governments. As part of his fiscal year 2004 budget, President Bush has proposed a $3.5 billion First Responder program that would give block grants to states to fund a variety of terrorism preparedness needs such as planning, training and equipment.

Additionally, the administration has proposed $500 million for the Firefighter Investment and Response Enhancement (FIRE) Act, which established a grant program to assist fire departments in protecting communities and fire fighters’ health and safety. The program is authorized at $900 million for FY 2004, and the Washington, D.C.-based International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) has lobbied for full funding.

“One of the biggest issues is getting the money down to local governments and local fire departments,” says George Burke, IAFF spokesman. “Two thirds of the nation’s fire departments are understaffed. Just in terms of fire protection, that is dangerous both to the public and to the fire fighters, and it results in less efficiency. And in our business, efficiency can be the difference between life and death.”

The Washington, D.C.-based National League of Cities (NLC) is lobbying to make it easier for local governments to get their hands on the money. “We’re interested in streamlining the application process for the cities,” says Deborah Rigsby, NLC’s senior legislative counsel. “We’re working with Congress to make the programs more flexible.”

Some homeland security funding has already begun to reach local governments, which has allowed upgrades in anti-terrorism equipment. New self-contained breathing apparatuses are being developed that, for example, resist chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) agents.

Improving communication

Aside from money for training and equipment, another major challenge facing local governments is interoperability, which is the ability of public safety and other government officials to communicate with each other during crises. Interoperability means cooperation and communication both laterally — across different branches of government, for example — and vertically among federal, state and local levels. Without that communication, lives can be lost. At the World Trade Center, for example, police received a radio warning that the second tower was going to collapse — a message that fire departments never received because they used different radios.

In 2002, 18 national associations representing state and local public safety officials formed the National Task Force on Interoperability (NTFI). After meeting several times, NTFI developed a guide for public officials to raise awareness about the importance of interoperability, to provide basic information and to offer guidance about developing interoperable radio communication systems.

Titled “When They Can’t Talk, Lives are Lost: What Public Officials Need to Know about Interoperability,” the guide defines interoperability and lays out the barriers that have prevented it in the past. Incompatible and aging communications equipment, limited funding and planning, and a fragmented radio spectrum have all combined to hinder communication.

“It’s hard to integrate an exurban volunteer fire department, for example, with an urban or suburban career professional department,” Burke explains. “So that creates some real problems when we talk about regionalizing this stuff.”

To help bridge the gaps, NTFI urges local governments to ask themselves the following questions:

• What types of emergencies typically occur in your community, and which public safety agencies respond to them?

• Are there certain major crimes or natural disasters, such as hurricanes, that may occur?

• Who needs to talk to one another every day?

• Who should be able to communicate and share data in the first eight hours of an emergency?

• Who will need to be added to that initial group if the emergency lasts longer than eight hours?

• Already, some communities have implemented interoperability strategies. Morristown, Tenn., for example, recently purchased a used mobile-home, which will become a rolling communication center during crises. Located east of Knoxville, Tenn., Morristown is a fairly urban city surrounded by a relatively rural area. Only ten days after Sept. 11, city and county officials were faced with a bomb scare in a busy intersection.

  The city ran into the obstacle of not being able to talk to the people it needed to, when it needed to, says Jim Crumley, Morristown city administrator. “Our guys went ahead and disrupted the device [which was a fake],” he says. “But we realized the need to improve our linkages with other local and state departments. We’re seeing some of the homeland security money trickle down to us — $150,000 so far — and we’ve used that primarily in the communications realm.”

  Mapping the response

  Facilitating communication is only part of the solution to emergency preparedness. Responders also need to visualize an emergency’s scope, map locations and understand the “geospatial context” of emergency situations. More and more governments are turning to geographic information systems (GIS) to map out several layers of data as part of their emergency response plans.

  In just one example, Pinellas County, Fla., is developing a GIS-based application for homeland security plans, working with software created by San Rafael, Calif.-based Autodesk. The new program will help the county coordinate all types of emergency response among its 24 municipalities, whether they are responding to a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.

  “With GIS, it’s like being able to look at spatial representations of our jurisdiction through multiple windows,” says Gary Vickers, director of emergency management for the county. “Each window has a different distribution of data, such as electrical delivery, water infrastructure, emergency operation centers, location of fire stations and so on, so that we cannot only see this information, we can manipulate it to indicate a change in status or availability.”

  Despite the technological advances, some local governments may still have a hard time sharing resources and information. Yet with increased homeland security funding and greater understanding of interoperability requirements, fewer obstacles exist for local governments that want to work together. “The problem is now understood,” IAFF’s Burke says. “There have been gains toward reaching a solution.”

  The author is a freelance writer based in Arlington, Va.