Preparedness

Blanc blancw at cnw.com
Fri Sep 21 21:39:09 PDT 2001


>From Declan:

:>Even before the fire at the crippled Pentagon across the Potomac had been
:>extinguished, frightening shortcomings in the District's emergency
:>preparedness were laid bare. Communications broke down, and key District
:>leaders scrambled to exchange information via e-mail and pagers. The fire
:>department had scant reserve equipment, a single hazardous-materials unit,
:>and no search-and-rescue units available to dispatch. There was no master
:>terrorism-response plan in place, so agency heads reached for whatever was
:>available on the nearest shelfwhich for some meant Y2K plans and, for the
:>fire department, a 1968 deployment guideline drafted in response to the
:>riots following the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

----------------

I've been hearing about the budget for the CIA/NSA/etc. defense budgets of
numbers like 30 billion - B I L L I O N - at the same time that I hear about
how their technology is outmoded, outdated, that they're all ignorant of
useful knowledge of the enemy (like how to communicate in their language),
that they are under-manned, etc.  Considering all the tax money which has
been spent by these and other departments for useless symbolic projects
which accomplish nothing, I am just taken aback at how the important things
which are truly useful, especially at a time like this, that
"infrastructure" which was the big buzzword some time ago, has been
neglected.  There are weights which fall upon you; then there are sinking
holes which pull you down.  Keep pouring that money into that sieve, y'all.
  ..
Blanc





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