Who’s in charge if there’s a major terrorist attack on the nation’s capital? It’s not the president. It’s not the Pentagon.
It’s Mayor Anthony Williams.
The District borders two states and is home to a number of federal agencies, the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court. But if a hijacked plane is flown into the RFK Stadium during a Nationals game or a radiological bomb explodes in the U.S. Capitol, the person in charge is the mayor, according to local and national officials.
“There’s no question who’s in charge,” said Barbara Childs-Pair, director of the District’s Emergency Management Agency. “It’s the mayor.”
But the mayor’s office does have limitations. The mayor doesn’t have the ability to call up the D.C. National Guard in case of natural disasters or civil disturbances, unlike the governors of the 50 states. Only the president has the power to call up the District’s Guard.
District Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton last week introduced legislation to authorize the mayor to activate the Guard.
In a major attack, the responding police or fire chief takes charge on the ground, even on federal property.
The mayor directs his commands from District’s Emergency Operations Center, a NASA-like nerve-center with video monitors, computers, communicationsequipment and a padlocked room with secured phone lines and links to federal, local and state Homeland Security authorities.
The center holds up to 60 people and, depending on the disaster, includes the mayor, top advisers, department heads and representatives from the FBI, Secret Service, hospitals and the electric company.
Information comes in and out of the operations center. Orders for evacuations, road closings, media advisories and coordination for mass casualties come from here.
In the case of a terrorist attack, the FBI takes command at the crime scene, working side by side with the District’s first responders, said FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak Jr. But the mayor remains in command of the District and its resources.
If the disaster is enormous, like in Hurricane Katrina, it becomes “an incident of national significance” and the federal government takes total command, said David Heyman, homeland security expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In the case of Katrina, he said, the government did not activate the incident of national significance command in a timely manner.
