Preparedness Against Terrorist Attacks Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction Statement by Chief John M. Eversole presented to Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Emergency Management of the Committee on Transportation U.S. House of Representatives April 6, 2000 International Association of Fire Chiefs 4025 Fair Ridge Drive Fairfax, VA 22033-2868 I am Chief John M. Eversole of the Chicago Fire Department. I also serve as Chair of the Hazardous Materials Committee of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Thank you, Madam Chairman, for inviting me to testify once again before this Committee. When I testified before you last year, I discussed the nature of civilian emergency response. I said then and I will repeat now, the issue of domestic terrorism is one in which America's fire departments have a vital interest. Violence perpetrated against our citizens for political purposes, national, international or otherwise, will be suffered locally. As the primary provider of emergency life safety services, fire fighters will be first on the scene of any act of terrorism, saving lives and mitigating damage. This was true in the minutes following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City. It has been so at countless incidents less notorious. So it will be in the future. Since my last appearance before this Committee, there has been progress on some fronts. However, I am very concerned at the pace of progress on others. Funding for equipment designed to enhance our ability to respond safely and effectively to an incident of terrorism involving chemical, biological, radiological or conventional weapons has been provided by Congress. This is a vital component of thorough preparedness. I can not stress enough the point that effective life saving must take place immediately after an event. If we are to mount an effective response, we can not rely upon assets that may not arrive in Chicago for hours or days. This is not an indictment of federal or state operational capabilities. It is simply a consequence of distance. The areas of any effective preparedness effort are twofold. First is the preparedness support effort that includes training and equipping first responders, the front line personnel. Second are efforts to coordinate and plan the operational effort that will take place at the scene of an incident. The preparedness support effort includes programs that are spread across federal agencies that to my knowledge include FEMA and the Departments of Justice, Defense and Health and Human Services. There can be no doubt that progress has been made. In Chicago we have been able to build an excellent joint response program with the local office of the FBI. Through the Department of Health and Human Services we have established a very adequate program with the Veterans' Administration to have a rapidly available drug cache. These are but two examples of federal and local entities working together for a common goal. The Nunn/Lugar program at DOD, awareness-level training developed by the Justice Department and the operations-level training delivered by DOJ's National Domestic Preparedness Consortium are excellent examples of how Congress can assist local first responders in a productive, efficient manner. I urge you to provide the resources necessary to expand access to these programs to as many fire fighters as possible in the shortest possible time frame. The Department of Justice, in a joint effort with the Department of Defense, has created an Interagency Board (IAB) to develop a standardized equipment list for use by agencies at all levels of government that may be consulted in determining how best to enhance existing hazardous materials and other response teams that may be involved in terrorist incident response. This is a significant step that has been a long time in coming. The IAB includes expertise from different levels of government and has gathered information that we can all use. However, when I spoke to this Committee last year, I believe we discussed the need for respirator masks that could be used by responders in the event of an incident. We talked of the lack of commercially available respirators that met National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) certification standards. Civilian responders are required by law to use only those pieces of personal protective equipment that meet NIOSH certification standards. It has been ten months since we had that discussion. Some respirator masks have been certified by NIOSH. However, the equipment certification program is generally lacking due to insufficient funding at NIOSH. Madam Chairman, if I may ask you and the members of this Committee for one, single thing and nothing else, it is to do whatever is necessary to facilitate NIOSH certification for first responders protective equipment. I would also like to address the federal inter-agency coordination that is necessary for a coordinated preparedness and response program. Notwithstanding the efficacy of many of the programs underway, there is an urgent need for better coordination among and between the federal agencies involved. It is an enormous undertaking for any fire chief to attempt to navigate the federal bureaucracy to get what he needs in the way of help or information. An office was approved last year by Congress to serve as a single point of contact for the response community. The National Domestic Preparedness Office is supposed to fill that role. Funding for this program was inexplicably delayed and subsequently we are behind in this task. Finally, I must tell you that notwithstanding the apparent slow pace of progress, the fire service is better off today than it was three years ago with respect to preparedness for terrorist incidents. I urge you in the strongest possible terms to continue this effort. It should be improved, expanded, expedited. Thank you again for inviting me to testify. I would be happy to answer any questions. Preparedness Against Terrorist Attacks Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction Statement by Chief P. Michael Freeman presented to Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Emergency Management of the Committee on Transportation U.S. House of Representatives April 6, 2000 International Association of Fire Chiefs 4025 Fair Ridge Drive Fairfax, VA 22033-2868 I am Michael Freeman, Chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. I also serve as Chairman of the Terrorism Committee of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. First, I would like to thank the Committee for its continued interest in ongoing terrorism preparedness efforts and its recognition of local public safety agencies as the primary responders to these events. The Los Angeles County Fire Department provides emergency services either directly or through mutual aid agreements to the county's 10 million residents over an area of 4,400 square miles. Our services include fire suppression, hazardous materials response, local search and rescue and emergency medical services. We also staff and equip a national Urban Search and Rescue team identified as California Task Force II. There are numerous public safety agencies within the county, indeed, there are numerous independent political jurisdictions within our borders, not least of which is the City of Los Angeles. Major agencies include the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles City Fire Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and others, in addition to my own fire department. We have learned through countless public emergencies, including the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that cooperation among and between responding agencies is critical to a well coordinated planning and response effort. To that end, we created a Terrorism Working Group that includes local fire service, law enforcement and public health. Our working group also includes the Los Angeles FBI field office and representatives from the state of California who would be involved in a major terrorist incident. This terrorism working group provides the public safety community in Los Angeles a forum in which we can effectively plan and exchange both information and ideas. Our experience with this approach has been validated in the past by non-terrorist incidents such as those I have mentioned. Los Angeles County and some of the jurisdictions within it have participated in federal preparedness efforts since their inception. We have participated in the Defense Department's Nunn/Lugar training, we have received grant funding from the Department of Justice and we have built a Metropolitan Medical Response System with the financial and expert assistance of the Department of Health and Human Services. Last year's Westwind exercise, sponsored by the Defense Department, took place in the City of Los Angeles and involved numerous federal response agencies in addition to those local, state and federal agencies involved in Los Angeles County's Terrorism Working Group. All of these federal initiatives to assist us in preparing for the contingency of terrorist attack have had a positive impact on our level of preparedness. Of that there is no doubt. However, as both a participant and an observer of our national effort to prepare states and local communities for the threat of terrorism in America, I believe that steps need to be taken by both Congress and the administration to craft a more well-ordered national strategy. It has been my experience, shared by many of my colleagues in other |