Emergency communication found lacking
WASHINGTON – Only six of 75 U.S. metropolitan areas won the highest grades for their emergency agencies’ ability to communicate during a disaster five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to a federal report obtained Tuesday by the Associated Press.
A draft portion of the report, to be released today, gives the best ratings to Washington, D.C; San Diego; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Columbus, Ohio; Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Laramie County, Wyo.
The lowest scores went to Chicago; Cleveland; Baton Rouge, La.; Mandan, N.D.; and American Samoa. The report included large and small cities and their suburbs, along with U.S. territories.
Neither Spokane nor Coeur d’Alene was included in the report.
In an overview, the report said all 75 areas surveyed have policies in place for helping their emergency workers communicate. But it cautioned that regular testing and exercises are needed “to effectively link disparate systems.”
The study, conducted by the Homeland Security Department, was likely to add fuel to what looms as a battle in Congress this year. Democrats who take over the majority this week have promised to try fixing the problem emergency agencies have communicating with one another but have not said specifically what they will do, how much it will cost or how they will pay for it.
“Five years after 9/11, we continue to turn a deaf ear to gaps in interoperable communications,” – the term used for emergency agencies’ abilities to talk to one another, said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “If it didn’t have such potentially devastating consequences, it would be laughable.”
Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke would not comment on the report, saying only that in releasing it today, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will “talk about nationwide assessments for interoperable communications.”
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, revealed major problems in how well emergency agencies were able to talk to one another during a catastrophe. Many firefighters climbing the World Trade Center towers died when they were unable to hear police radio warnings to leave the crumbling buildings.
In New York now, the report said, first responders were found to have well-established systems to communicate among one another – but not the best possible. Thirteen U.S. cities scored better than New York.
Just over a year ago, Hurricane Katrina underscored communication problems when radio transmissions were hindered because the storm’s winds toppled towers.
A separate report the Homeland Security Department released last month found that emergency workers from different agencies are capable of talking to one another in two-thirds of 6,800 U.S. communities surveyed.
But David Boyd, who heads the Homeland Security office that conducted the study, said in an interview that only about 10 percent of them have systems so fully developed that they can communicate with them routinely. That survey did not name the cities that provided data.
In the study to be released today, communities were judged in three categories: operating procedures in place, use of communications systems and how effectively local governments have coordinated in preparation for a disaster.
Overall, 16 percent of the communities were given the highest score for the communications procedures they have in place and 1 percent got the lowest rating.
Nineteen percent got the top grade for their plans for coordinating during a disaster and 8 percent received the worst, and 21 percent got the best mark for how well they use their communications equipment while 4 percent got the bottom rating.