A sobering final report of the Nationwide Plan Review by U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded recently that the state of emergency preparedness in the United States remains an area of “significant national concern.” Even after the devastation of Sept. 11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, three-quarters of the states and 90 percent of the nation’s urban areas are still not prepared to deal with a similar large-scale catastrophe.
Of particular concern for Washington-area residents is the widespread inability to evacuate large numbers of people. The comprehensive, peer-reviewed report provides little comfort for those who believe local authorities are ready for a nuclear event, pandemic or a biologic or chemical attack. “Significant weaknesses in evacuation planning are an area of profound concern,” the report noted, including the lack of “clear protocols and triggers” for evacuation, continued weaknesses in the notification process and even getting trained evacuation personnel where they need to be.
Ironically, the best evacuation plans out there are for people who live near nuclear power plants, which are required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Mass evacuation planning in both states and urban areas remains inadequate,” the 174-page report noted. And only a tenth had sufficient plans to assist people who sheltered in place. Bottom line: The government spent $240 billion in tax dollars on homeland security over the past five years, but you’re essentially on your own.
One of the main problems is that most state and local government officials have adopted a head-in-the-sand approach, “reflect[ing] a consistent trend of discounting the likelihood of a catastrophic event.” Many review participants took the “it couldn’t happen here” approach, even to National Planning Scenarios that were specifically designed to force them to consider otherwise.
So it should not come as a surprise that only a small percentage of their emergency plans include volunteers or the private sector, make adequate provision for special-needs populations, or even resolve the kind of chain of command and communications problems that hampered Katrina relief efforts.
The scariest part is finding out that there is still no “single convergence point where federal, state and local concepts and resources can be translated into specific patterns of action.” This means that the same kind of bureaucratic paralysis on display in New Orleans last year is more than likely to happen again. The Louisiana city is far from the only one still shockingly unprepared to cope with large-scale disaster. Overall, less than a third of all states and an even lower percentage of urban areas have emergency plans in place that DHS considers adequate, feasible and acceptable.
And that’s simply not acceptable.
