In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

It was clearly not the aim of the alleged Times Square bomber to spotlight the role of the citizen as part of the U.S.’s homeland security effort in one of the nation’s most high profile — and lit — places. But he did. The T-shirt vendors who tipped off a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer to a suspicious Nissan Pathfinder Saturday night have already become national heroes and icons for the value of citizen alertness.

One of the vendors, Lance Horton, even put in a plug for public involvement when asked by a reporter what advice he would give his fellow citizens: “See Something, Say Something,” echoing the slogan of the New York transit authority’s ubiquitous information campaign.

Homeland Security Department (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano, who has made citizen engagement a major theme of her tenure, was among the government officials who cited the vendors’ actions as a model for all Americans: “What happened on Saturday shows the critical role that the American people play in the security of our country. If anybody ever had any doubt about it, this failed bombing attempt clearly shows the value of the saying, if you see something, say something.”

The attention given to this successful example offers a terrific opportunity to assess the public’s role in helping the authorities on terrorism. Are Americans “seeing” and “saying” enough? Most law enforcement officials I have talked to believe the “See Something, Say Something” and other similar efforts have been successful raising awareness, but that they have not fully tapped the huge asset that is the U.S. public for homeland security effort.

And, the concerns often expressed by political leaders and security officials about the need for citizens to be “vigilant” and avoid “complacency” as time passes since 9/11 seem to imply that authorities want more and better information from the general public. If so, that needs to be explained more explicitly. In fact, I think it would be helpful for officials to tell us what specifically does “be vigilant” and “don’t be complacent” mean for the average American.

Further, a major DHS survey last year found more work was required in this area. As one of the report’s conclusions stated: “Individuals believed they had a personal responsibility to report suspicious behavior, but greater collaboration between citizens and law enforcement is needed.”

“See Something, Say Something” is an easy slogan to understand and remember. But does it provide enough guidance on its own? This was a smoking car which is — not taking anything at all away from the actions of the hero vendors — a relatively evident potentially dangerous sign to spot. Could the public could use some more direction on what is suspicious and what is not?

The answer, according to an article in Slate by Noreen Malone, “If You See Something, Say Something? You’d never shut up. An afternoon observing ’suspicious activity’ in Times Square,” is probably yes. The piece half seriously but aptly illustrates that seeing and saying the right things is not all that clear cut for the typical civilian (or reporter). Malone set out for Times Square on Tuesday afternoon to try to identify “suspicious behavior” (following the “See Something” campaign’s instructions to “Be alert to unattended packages; Be wary of suspicious behavior; Take notice of people in bulky or inappropriate clothing; Report exposed wiring or other irregularities.”) She found a lot of unusual if not “suspicious behavior” in Times Square;” the difficulty was figuring out what (if anything) to report:

I met a Brazilian tourist who had way too many shabby bags in tow, and an off-duty Indian pilot who was carrying a grocery bag around his neck like a cape, food stains running down his shirtfront. I sidled up to a guy scalping Broadway tickets because he was wearing a sweatshirt in the heat. I eyed vendors covering their knockoff (or stolen) sunglasses display with a cloth—what if they weren’t worried about copyright law? What if they had a bomb under that cloth?

Malone ends her piece by asking for some guidance: “But I saw packages everywhere. Every tourist stands around looking lost, a big bag slung over their shoulder. How do you know what is truly dangerous? I would argue that government authorities need to answer that question more fully. In a playful way, the article does point out out that the public could use more than just “See Something, Say Something” to most effectively play the critical role officials say they play in homeland security.

Clearly, there is a limit to what can be disclosed without compromising intelligence sources and methods, but many security officials believe that more can and should be told to the public. In fact, a number of them have told me that they would like to offer more information so Americans understand the threat situation better. It makes their jobs easier, establishes more credibility, and may better innoculate the nation when/if something does happen. And it is in the interest of law enforcement to be candid with voters if they want them to urge their elected officials to continue to support government investments in preventing and responding to terror threats. A goal of that educational process should be highlighting how citizen involvement actually helps and more precisely what citizens should (and should not) be doing.

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Another thing you can do to help in the cleanup of the Gulf Coast oil spill is to participate in CrisisCommons‘ crowdsourcing efforts. A post on the group’s website explains:

CrisisCommons is working hard with a number of other organizations, including NGOs and educational institutions, to develop a common crowdsourced platform for reporting the effects of the Gulf Oil Spill. We believe that if the various crowdsourcing efforts could be aggregated and shared, this could improve the response from all response organizations.

Interested citizens should go to the Commons’ Oil Spill Response Wiki Page which outlines the planned initiatives:

Purpose: To encourage citizen reporting of effects and share their story of the oil spill on the gulf region, provide safety information, connect the public with volunteer opportunities. Citizen reporting data will include on qualitative data elements such as photos, video, time/date, location as well as qualitative elements such as free text field. All data reported will be shared back via www.gulfoilspill.com in open and accessible data feeds to be freely available for anyone, including response organizations and academic institutions, to import data and create open tools to allow for visualization, aggregation and analysis.

The initial tools for this project will include:

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USNews.com’s “10 Things You Can Do To Help The Gulf Coast Clean The Oil Spill” has a good selection of some volunteer/donation/informational opportunities for citizens interested in assisting with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup:

1. Want to lend a hand? Affected states allow you to register to volunteer online. Louisiana and Florida volunteers can register online, or Gulf Coast volunteers can call 1-866-448-5816. Oil Spill Volunteers is another registration site that matches up those willing to assist with the groups that need their help. Volunteer opportunities run the gamut from wildlife sitter to administrative support, so any and all help is appreciated.

2. Florida is calling on untrained volunteers to pick up trash on its beaches to minimize the impact of the spill once it hits land. Volunteers are asked to leave natural debris in place, though, as it provides shelter for birds and other animals. If you’d like to help out with areas where oil has already washed ashore, it is recommended that you contact a local group to be trained in how to handle oil-covered materials.

3. If you’re in the Gulf Coast area and see a distressed animal, do not try to assist it on your own. Injured animals can be defensive and may try to bite you—also, crude oil can be harmful when it comes in contact with human skin. A hotline has been established for injured and dead animal sightings. Call 1-866-557-1401 to leave a message with the animal’s precise location. iPhone users in the Gulf can download the Noah project’s app to document distressed animals and the spill’s impact on wildlife. Learn more about Noah here.

4. Two specialized opportunities to help are available for qualified professionals. BP has called upon fishermen and boaters in the Gulf area to participate in their “Vessels of Opportunity” program. Those with eligible vessels will be compensated for their use in cleanup efforts. For more information, call 281-366-5511. In addition, the EPA has called upon engineers and experts to submit alternative cleanup solutions via this form.

5. However, if you’re not already living in the area, it is not recommended that you travel to the Gulf Coast to assist. OilSpillVolunteers.com and other organizations stress that your help would be more appreciated in the form of a donation. The National Wildlife Federation, Alabama Coastal Foundation, and Save our Seabirds are among the many organizations accepting donations for coastal relief.

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In Slate, Christopher Beam has an interesting piece, “Oh Well: Why We’re So Bad At Dealing With Unlikely Disasters Like The Louisiana Oil Spill,” about how we as a nation think about, prepare for, and ultimately learn from unlikely but disastrous events. His conclusion: not well.

…the real lesson of the oil spill may be how bad we are at dealing with unlikely but disastrous events. “We deal with them by ignoring them until they happen, and then overreacting,” says John Harrald, a professor at George Washington University’s Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management. It’s one thing to look back and figure out how the oil spill could have been prevented. It’s another to grapple with the combination of poor foresight and 20/20 hindsight that makes preventing these meltdowns so difficult.

Beam outlines several reasons for the difficulty we have with these high impact, low probability incidents:

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By coincidence two days after the attempted bombing in Times Square, the new issue of  The New Yorker has a good article, “Fallout,” written by Nick Paumgarten, which looks at the possibility of a nuclear device being detonated by terrorists in New York City.

The piece focuses on Irwin Redliner, the head of Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, who points out there are actually things that citizens can do to prepare for and respond to such an event. Though the article also notes the challenge in getting people to believe that:

The idea of preparedness, during the Cold War, was absurd, a fantasy; a full-tilt exchange of warheads would have been unsurvivable, and so, as people came to recognize the futility of the Eisenhower- and Kennedy-era placebos and sops (duck-and-cover, Bert the Turtle, back-yard fallout shelters), they stopped thinking about preparing. Prevention was all. But a terrorist attack is different: harder to prevent, easier to survive.

“There has been a transition from a nuclear-annihilation scenario to an isolated-terrorist-nuclear-bomb scenario,” he said. “But we’re still locked into a mind-set that nuclear war would be so overwhelming that any kind of preparedness would be futile.” Redlener took out a loaf of bread and began making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “There’s a fatalism that clouds the planning process. It’s frustrating. It’s been shown that your odds of survival can be significantly improved with a relatively small amount of planning. I could put it all on a card.”

In the article, Redlener sketches out a possible nuclear bomb scenario in Manhattan and explains what citizens should do:

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A crude bomb was found in the back of a Nissan Pathfinder in the middle of Times Square Saturday night after a T-shirt vendor on the street reported the car to a police officer. According to a New York Times story:

a T-shirt vendor on the sidewalk saw smoke coming out of vents near the back seat of the S.U.V., which was now parked awkwardly at the curb with its engine running and its hazard lights on. The vendor called to a mounted police officer, the mayor said, who smelled gunpowder when he approached the S.U.V. and called for assistance. The police began evacuating Times Square, starting with businesses along Seventh Avenue, including a Foot Locker store and a McDonald’s.

Police officers from the emergency service unit and firefighters flooded the area and were troubled by the hazard lights and running engine, and by the fact that the S.U.V. was oddly angled in the street. At this point, a firefighter from Ladder 4 reported hearing several “pops” from within the vehicle. The police also learned that the Pathfinder had the wrong license plates on it.

The vendor, according to the Times, who wore a white fedora, had a limp and walked with a cane, was swarmed by television cameras as he tried to make his way to a taxicab on 44th Street. As he got into the taxi he was asked by a reporter what he had to say to his fellow citizens. His answer will be repeated a lot by the authorities in the days to come  – “See something, say something”.

The t-shirt vendor who ’saw something and said something’ to police about a suspicious car in Times Square yesterday. (credit: New York Times)

On the KnowTheNetwork.com blog, there is a fascinating post, “Tornado Alley, Twitter Style,” by Keith Crawford. He offers a terrific case study of how Twitter — and in particular the hashtag #ARwx created by one Tweeter — outpaced the mainstream media in informing his Arkansas community when a tornado struck this week:

Apr 30, 2010 may well be known as the night that new media changed the game in the state of Arkansas. Tonight was one of the most amazing examples of the power of Twitter and in turn showed how excruciatingly far we have to go. Here’s how 4 little letters beat the entire mainstream media.

There is a storm a comin’. It’s springtime in the South and that means it’s tornado season. Tornados are a very strange animals. They touchdown for seconds, change directions in a blink of an eye and travel at 50+ mph. It’s a weather event like no other.

We aren’t strangers to twisters down here and we all know to turn on the TV, break out the severe weather radios and wait for the weatherman to say “take cover”. Only tonight was different.

There was one system that had better news, quicker updates, broader coverage, and more reporters in the field than any other. Twitter.

I can’t do it justice but let me attempt to give you a glimpse of what you could find:

* The National Weather Service guy, @wxmandan giving you updates on NWS bulletins and reports as he saw them. A couple of times he’d even say “we are getting ready to release…” And every person in the stream had the info 1-2min before the TV (that’s an eternity in tornado time);

* Regional forecasters adding 3d images and all sorts of graphs I can’t even explain; Storm reports statewide, eyewitness accounts of hail and funnel cloud;

* Links to webcast of the Arkansas State Police radio feed;

*Instant notifications of tornado sirens wherever they sounded;

*People reporting that tv/power was out and they were ONLY getting news via the #arwx stream. (That is huge! We are talking about keeping people safe. Not theory, ROI, or analytics but vital information distribution)

Simply, the most comprehensive data stream you can possibly imagine, made possible by the #arwx hashtag. There was only one thing missing. The organizations that are actually make a living reporting news and weather…

In the rest of the post, Crawford elaborates on the event with useful screenshots and offers suggestions to local broadcast media on better using social media during these emergencies. Thanks to the AllHandsDotNet Twitter feed for bringing this to my attention.

As the Gulf Coast oil spill approaches the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, national and local groups are recruiting citizen volunteers to assist in the response both at the scene as well as remotely through the web. Below I am posting a CNN.com article with a list of organizations that were assembling lists of people interested in helping in the Gulf as well as the information on the group Crisis Commons which is recruiting people online from around the world to assist the efforts using technology.

According to a CNN.com article “Volunteers recruited to help in oil spill threat”:

How can you help? A number of organizations are recruiting volunteers.

The Audubon Society, which is affiliated with the Louisiana Coastal Initiative, is making its Center for Birds of Prey in Florida available for bird cleansing and rehabilitation. Elsewhere, Audubon said it was gearing up to mobilize volunteers and provide assistance as the oil reaches land in Louisiana and elsewhere. [You can sign up here.]

The Deep Water Horizon response team is looking for help in identifying shoreline and animals affected. Oiled wildlife should not be captured but instead reported at 1-866-557-1401. To report areas with oil ashore or to leave contact information to volunteer in the affected areas, call 1-866-448-5816.

These local organizations also are gathering volunteers’ information as they prepare for the environmental damage this oil can cause:

The Alabama Coastal Foundation is collecting contact information from volunteers for cleanup efforts along the Alabama coast should the oil spill reach the state’s shores. Call 251-990-6002

The Mobile Bay National Estuary Program is looking for volunteers to help reduce the potential impact of the oil spill in Mobile Bay. Call 251-431-6409.

The Mobile Baykeeper is asking for contact details of volunteers is collecting contact information for volunteers to respond anywhere along the Gulf Coast, if needed. Call 251-433-4229.

Save Our Seabirds is a Florida bird rescue group that is looking for volunteers and support as its response team prepares to help oiled wildlife. Call 941-388-3010.

For more information on volunteering in the Gulf as well as contributing remotely, you should check out Crisis Commons. It is an online community comprised largely of everyday citizens (many in the tech field), which employs technology, translations and information to relief agencies and disaster affected communities, most recently after the Haiti earthquake. It offers interested people an opportunity to be part of the response to major emergencies from wherever they are.

Crisis Commons held a conference call yesterday to begin planning how volunteers from the U.S  and around the world can be helpful in the oil spill response. For those interested, I would check the Crisis Commons Oil Spill page which offers more info on the organization and shows some potential projects as well as the Oil Spill CrisisWiki site which offers ways to help and ways to get help along with news and resources. I would also suggest following the Twitter lists CrisisCamp/OilSpill and NPRNewsGulf-Oil-Spill as well as @CrisisCamp and #OilSpill. (You can also email me, and I can put you in touch with Crisis Commons.)

A useful caveat for volunteers going to the scene is offered in this Discovery News article:

Training is essential for volunteers, who could themselves suffer health problems if they should come into contact with the oil. ”The public can’t just go out and pick up oiled wildlife,” Nils Warnock, field operations specialist at the California Oiled Wildlife Care Network, managed by the University of California at Davis, explained to Discovery News.

He added that an emergency phone number (866-557-1401) has been established where people can report animals affected by the oil spill. The public is encouraged to have ready the number and type of animals, the date and time they were seen, their location and any observations about the animals’ behavior.

Louisiana fishers sign forms offering their fishing boats and equipment to aid in protecting the coastal wetlands at the St. Bernard Parish Council Chambers in Chalmette (Credit: Associated Press).

As the concept of ‘resilience’ in homeland security gains prominence here in the U.S., the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University hosted a timely speech by Brigadier-General (ret.) Meir Elran, of The Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, “The Israeli Experience: From Civil Defense To Resilience.” According to the HSPI summary of the event:

Elran began his remarks by noting two key points. First, that societal resilience plays a vital role in how democracies respond to crises. Second, that it is only in the last few years that resiliency has begun to receive serious attention in both Israel and the United States, and to challenge previous views of homeland security based upon civil defense.

Elran then discussed how terrorism, potential natural disasters, and the realization that none of Israel’s enemies are prepared to engage its defense forces directly, have illuminated the fact that national security is more than physical defense. According to Elran, the primary issue is the defense of society from a mental, social, cultural, and political perspective—a fact recognized by terrorists, who select targets based upon their psychological impact.

According to Elran, societal resilience consists of the capacity to contain major traumas; the capability of the public to ”bounce back”; and the ability of the system to return quickly to (perhaps even exceed) previous functions…Elran argued for the need to engage civilian populations in disaster response. To accomplish this, he stated that more needs to be done to educate, involve, and connect the public to issues of preparedness—and that these efforts ought to be focused at the community level.

And, he underscored the importance of involving the citizenry in this effort: ”…an active public is a resilient public and a passive public is a vulnerable public,” adding that if you can engage people “with the issues of preparedness, they will be exposed to the systems, to the threats, to the responses, and they will be better prepared to participate in the management of the crisis once it happens.”

The audio of the speech can be found here. Elran’s presentation slides are here.

In an interesting new op-ed, “Gimme Shelter: The Need For A Contemporary Civil Defense Program,” on the website of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Stanford University professor Lawrence Wein argues that the federal government should immediately start a comprehensive public education campaign about the benefits of sheltering during a nuclear terrorist attack.

Wein along with two graduate students developed a mathematical model of a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device detonated at ground level in the National Mall in Washington at 10 a.m. on a weekday morning (one of the 15 disaster scenarios used by the Department of Homeland Security for its planning purposes).

According to the model, if the public knew when to ’shelter in place’ it could save tens of thousands of lives:

Approximately 80,000 people would die from the immediate effects of the blast and heat and the radiation generated in the first minute. (These numbers are rough estimates and depend upon a number of irreducible factors, including the precise weather conditions.) Additionally, fallout–radioactive material carried by the explosive force and prevailing winds for up to 20 miles–would kill 20,000-40,000 pedestrians (i.e., commuters and residents without access to a vehicle) and 20,000-60,000 people in vehicles. The lower range represents the case in which most people shelter in basements or large buildings (office or residential) for 12-24 hours after the blast; the upper range represents the case in which most people attempt to immediately evacuate (by foot or vehicle).

Of course, as we’ve discussed on the blog including in the previous post, it would be helpful if the public were more informed about dealing with these possibilities — as Americans once were. Wein writes:

…as a society, we have forgotten about the importance of sheltering–a mainstay of Cold War-era civil defense training. This is partly because there isn’t a scientific consensus on the shelter versus evacuation decision. Recommendations range from “evacuate if you can do it quickly” to “everyone shelter-in-place.” Subtler strategies include “shelter unless you’re in an area that will receive a potentially lethal dose of radiation” and “evacuate if your shelter isn’t very good and you can rapidly get away from the plume.

Our analysis suggests that there is only a tiny fraction of people who would be better off by evacuating. And we should note that these people won’t know who they are when the decision about evacuation needs to be made. Accurate plume information–the cloud can be irregularly shaped due to different wind directions at different altitudes–and travel-time estimates won’t be available, and the ability for the government to communicate to those impacted by the attack will be extremely limited, perhaps restricted to battery-powered radios.

Wein contends that even if information and communication were perfect, history indicates that the public compliance on evacuating might be far from it:

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