Nov. 6, 2001
Managing in a World of Risk
A Conversation About Post-Sept. 11 Life
From the Airwaves is a transcript of The
GW Washington Forum, the weekly public affairs radio program produced
by GW, hosted by Richard Sheehe, and broadcast on WWRC-AM 1260 in Washington.
This conversation, with Jack Harrald, director of the Institute for
Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management, and Dr. Keith Holtermann, chief
of research and health policy analysis at The George Washington Universitys
Ronald Reagan Institute of Emergency Medicine, comes from a recent program.
Richard Sheehe: After the immediate shock
of the terrorist attacks begins to recede, homeland security is taking
the forefront. How do we prepare for the next attack? What are the kinds
of threats that may be out there?
Jack Harrald: I think we will see something
different. What this event has raised in the national consciousness
is a sense of vulnerability and people are dealing with that, which
is different than risk. The difficulty youre seeing in the press
is any sort of estimate of what the likelihood or probability is. We
dont have any way to estimate other than intelligence sources
what the likelihood of an event is. People are looking at the vulnerability
and the potential consequences and you have a dialogue that isnt
anchored in some rational thought of this.
Keith Holtermann: I think an important
consideration that you need to bring into this is that as you begin
to harden and make certain areas more secure, and less vulnerable, then
youve softened other targets. We need to really think about if
we make the downtown Washington, DC area impenetrable we monitor
the traffic, we dont allow Ryder vans to approach the White House
weve then softened other targets.
RS: In terms of sheer manpower? If weve
got everyone downtown then are suburbs more at risk?
KH: I believe the other areas become more
enticing to a terrorist because they are easier to hit. If we make something
difficult to hit, then were not providing as much at a shopping
mall or somewhere else where large numbers of people are congregated,
but maybe wouldnt have that same kind of icon effect as the World
Trade Center.
JH: I think you see that, and part of the
focus is on increasing airline security, which we must do. But the flip
side of that is will that make us safe? The answer, of course, is no.
Part of what weve learned is that we are vulnerable. Emergency
management and emergency medicine systems must be prepared to deal with
potential mass casualty events, whatever their costs are.
RS: Its almost like a pendulum swing.
Before these terrorist attacks, few Americans even thought about the
threat. Now, were hypersensitive to the threat. Are there any
keys to getting the right level of sensitivity and awareness to threats?
KH: Thats an individual question,
something each person needs to come to grips with. Im getting
over a cold and my first thought (was bioterrorism). So the issue here
is terrorists clearly win when we have these kinds of thoughts. In order
for us to consciously beat them, we need to be conscious not to think
that way. We really do not want to be afraid. We want to go ahead. We
want to buy a new car. We want to buy a new refrigerator. We want to
go out and spend money. We want to believe the economy is not going
to be hit again or will not continue to go down because of what recently
happened. I think thats the way you beat it. Its really
by consciously saying I dont want to be affected by this. Im
going to do what I believe I would have done in this situation anyway
and then feel good about that. Go on to feel that this is not
only something thats helping me, but its something thats
helping the nation, the economy, my friends, my family. Then, hopefully,
eventually that feeling of having to do that consciously will slip away.
JH: I think we need to make a concerted
effort to understand the threat, understand the vulnerabilities. There
are things we can do. We focus on security, but theres also design,
individual behaviors, individual protections, our abilities, particularly
in the chem/bio area, to detect when an event has happened. One thing
about the conventional attack on the World Trade Center was that there
wasnt any confusion in anyones mind that something had happened.
In a biological event, that is a problem and the ability to act and
respond to that. The focus right now is on what the federal government
is going to do. Were looking at the security aspects the
FBI and what the is military doing. The solutions to understanding the
vulnerabilities and being prepared to deal with future events largely
are local, that is, your local emergency medical system, your emergency
management system, your state, your county, your city. This is where
we have to be prepared, this is where we have to be equipped, this is
where we have to understand our vulnerabilities.
KH: Nearly every major city that had an
office of emergency management, and had a very competent office of emergency
medical services and fire department should have already done a scenario
on what happens if a major airliner were to crash into my city. It wasnt
like we didnt know the World Trade Center was vulnerable. It had
been attacked before. We had been told many times that there were other
events that were to occur, but were thwarted. These are pre-planned
scenarios that, either using computer modeling or through real-life
situations, such as an airplane crashing at an airport, we run those
simulation drills yearly or every six months, depending on the size
of the airport and FAA regulations. We run these kinds of drills and
this comes down to the general preparedness of the emergency medical
service system, the fire suppression services, the police services,
and how well theyve prepared for a general event, not even a terrorist
event. Many of these other events, for example though, if it were to
be some kind of chemical terrorism, really turn out to be hazardous
material events that our fire departments respond to on a daily basis.
Theyre prepared to handle those kinds of events. There are some
other very serious considerations that need to come into play, similar
to what happened in the Atlanta abortion clinic bombings, where there
were secondary devices that were there to trap the emergency services
responders that came in. There are issues of dirty bombs, for example,
where we not only have to deal with the aftermath of a sudden explosion,
but someone could put plutonium next to the stick of dynamite. The foundation
of our response is that of our everyday preparedness. That is where
we really need to concentrate on and make our everyday preparedness
perfect.
RS: We spoke about the kinds of threats
and what we have to do is build upon the existing emergency management
structure. What are people in the emergency management field thinking
about now as you look at this response. What are we learning about what
to do right, what we can do better?
JH: The press, and I think correctly so,
focuses on the individual heroism of the individual responders and response
groups. Basically, we have the best system in the world and the system
works. What Keith was talking about of improving the system through
what we learn in actual events and in drills is of critical importance.
What were looking at is where can this system be improved, particularly
those of us who have been working this system have been talking a long
time about the potential mass casualty/mass fatality event. We have
not had a mass fatality event of this magnitude in the United States
for 101 years, not since the Galveston hurricane, which was about the
same number of fatalities. In the press and in the public, theres
a perception that bad things can happen, but theyre not going
to hurt a lot of people. Now, we know that peace is gone forever. Looking
at the systems and integrating systems and getting information between
systems, thats where were looking for the improvement. The
issue of providing information on structural engineers to the responders.
What are the first responders exposed to? What are the hazards? One
of the things that happened in the Pentagon response is medical responders,
some from this University, were right there with the firemen, working
with the building designers, saying there are no hazardous materials.
That lab that people are saying is in there is a photography lab. Its
not some sort of hazardous materials lab so the first responders are
not risking their lives.
RS: A lot of these firefighters died not
from the smoke, but when the building collapsed. Is there a way to anticipate
whether a building is going to collapse?
KH: I believe absolutely thats the
case. This is where issues of pre-planning come into play. We dont
have infinite resources. We cant pre-plan every possible event.
We do look at communities, FEMA, and its roll-out to individual state,
county, municipal offices of emergency management, to look at issues
of risk and vulnerability in every community, so that if you have a
series of chlorine tank cars parked in a given area, they look at what
is the most common prevailing wind, how this affects it, how you would
do evacuations. All of that is very well pre-planned and written into
actual scripts so that when those events occur, youre not standing
up there trying to figure out what to do, but youre actually going
pretty much by a line-by-line guide on how youre going to work
through that scenario. Of course, things always change and people need
to be in that piece of the interaction, but you do script a lot of this.
JH: That information is known somewhere
in the system. The person who needs to know is the person whos
making the decision of sending 20, 50, 100 people into that structure.
Thats a difficult issue because were dealing with structural
issues. Twenty years ago, we were talking about chemical issues. Firemen
were dying going into warehouse fires because they werent told,
and didnt know, what was in that warehouse. Weve solved
that problem. I think we have to solve the problem of detection of chemical
and biological agents so that we have technology to protect our people.
RS: Is there a central database of buildings
and whats in them?
JH: This is an issue of local preparedness
and in most major metropolitan areas, thats known. Hazardous materials
have to be reported to the EPA and where theyre stored. Hazardous
materials in transportation are noted on the transportation aspect and
the Department of Transportation regulates that. There are some difficult
issues with temporary storage of hazardous materials. But, in general,
the firefighters responding to buildings know whats there, know
what the structure is. There are areas of the country where that may
not be true, but the technology and the capability exist in most metropolitan
areas.
RS: Did our preparations for the Y2K crisis,
which never materialized, help us at all?
JH: Where that really helped us was in
the corporate crisis management. This has been the biggest economic
hit on corporations, from a damage point of view, of any event in American
history. Major companies, in spite of tremendous loss of life and an
incredible loss of equipment, are up and running. The World Trade Center
was attacked before and lost power in 1993. People got their back-up
sites going and then the Y2K aspect happened and youre right,
there is much more capability to back-up systems. The thing you see
from a corporate point of view that no company that I know of plans
for is the loss of people. Companies have lost 30, 40, 50, 70 percent
of their senior employees. So the knowledge to run the systems is going
to be difficult to replace.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu