In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

The Aspen Institute has released a very interesting new study “New York City’s Preparedness For Terrorism (And Catastrophic Natural Disasters)”. The report offers a unique view of the preparedness efforts of major institutions in the New York City-area. It is the result of a three-day workshop which featured presentations from leaders in the governmental, business, non-profit and academic sectors from the entire region.

The New York report, which was funded by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, is the first of five studies assessing the emergency preparedness of U.S. cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and New Orleans are the other four). The project is headed by Clark Kent Ervin, Director of Aspen’s Homeland Security Initiative and former Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. I was happy to be able to participate in the New York workshop which was held at the Ford Foundation headquarters in Manhattan.

The goal of the report, authored by Ervin, is “to identify best practices that can be replicated in other cities around the nation; to identify any gaps in preparedness; and to determine how to close any such gaps.” It is well worth reading to anyone interested in homeland security/disaster preparedness and can be found on the Aspen Institute website here.

The study offers 69 “Best Practices”, 52 “Gaps & Recommendations (if any) to Close Them”; and 8 “General Concerns”. In the Introduction, Ervin makes this overall statement:

There are many important recommendations in this report. But, perhaps the most important one is only implicit. To make it explicit, Washington policy makers should talk less and listen more to the “preventers” and responders” around the country who are on the front lines every day in the ongoing struggle to protect us from terror attacks and natural disasters.

In the Executive Summary, Ervin highlights 5 Best Practices, 11 Gaps and summarizes his General Concerns. As this blog focuses on the citizen role in preparedness, I found it particularly interesting that two of the first three “Gaps” mentioned in the Executive Summary as well as one of the top General Concerns involve the public in a significant way. Those include raising questions about people’s willingness to support politically and financially the initiatives necessary to protect the City (and the nation); the need for a national culture of preparedness; and the level of societal complacency about the terrorist threat:

Funding: Counter-terrorism funding is hugely expensive, and even relatively wealthy cities like New York will find it increasingly difficult to bear this burden more or less alone. As more time passes without another attack, as crime rises, and until the economy improves, we are likely to see a continuing concern on the part of local police departments – the “first preventers” of terrorism and the “first responders” to terrorism – that they can ill afford to devote ever scarcer resources to fighting a danger that increasingly seems anything but clear and present. Whatever the public perception, though, terrorism remains a major threat facing the nation, if not the major threat…

Focus on Recovery Rather than Preparedness: The nation lacks a “culture of preparedness.” The government and the private sector are quick to respond to terror attacks and natural disasters, but reluctant to devote attention and resources to attempting to minimize their effects by better preparing for them. Unlike, say, global warming and Al Gore, or Tibetan rights and Richard Gere, preparedness “has no Angelina Jolie.”

General Concerns: For want of a better term, I have called certain overarching issues that are neither best practices nor gaps per se “general concerns.” Among them are the conviction among security professionals that another terror attack is inevitable; that, notwithstanding, the general public, and even the business community, have grown complacent about the threat of terrorism; that the nation is particularly vulnerable to attacks by suicide bombers, attacks using improvised explosive devices, and attacks on mass transit systems and cyber networks.

To me, the report’s findings show the important role that officials believe the public has in homeland security and disaster preparedness. And it points out that despite significant improvements in readiness across many sectors (particularly here in New York as the list of 52 Best Practices indicate) there is still work to do when it comes to citizen preparedness and engagement. I expect that this report will help in that process.