I believe that there is a reasonable certainty that our fire and emergency services will soon face the reality of an increase in international terrorism incidents in this country.....and I know that we are not prepared! Nearly all of our nation's anti-terrorist measures, up to this point, have been directed exclusively to the law enforcement portion of the equation. For all intents, the nation's fire and emergency services organizations have no information on terrorist threats and almost nothing exists on how the fire and emergency services should respond to a terrorist incident. 2 As you know, law enforcement been successful beyond expectation, in their intelligence efforts to thwart terrorist incidents. However, our nation has experienced several major international terrorist incidents that have been successful (most notably the World Trade Center Bombing and the PanAm flight over Scotland)....and we stand unprepared to respond. Once our law enforcement agencies and counter-terrorist intelligence systems have been successfully bypassed, and another incident occurs, the fire and emergency services are the ones that will respond to the fires, building collapses, injuries and deaths. Our nation's response to a terrorist incident will be judged, in a large measure, strictly by the preparation and response of local fire and emergency services. I am sure that our fire and emergency service leaders are not aware of the fact that in nearly 50% of terrorist bombings, a secondary bomb (often larger than the initial bomb) has been set to attack the responding rescuers. Ms. Kay Goss, Associate Director This was tragically pointed out in two recent suicide bombings in Israel.....the Tel Aviv bus (the second bomb did not detonate) and the Beit Lid bus stop bombing (the second bomb killed more soldiers than the first bomb). I can only imagine what the horrible results would have been of a series of well timed car bombs outside the World Trade Center in the middle of the responding fire units and ambulances. We can be sure that terrorists are studying the TV videotapes of incidents to understand how we respond with law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services. They are looking for weak areas that they can exploit in future incidents. And, these are not oldfashioned anarchists, today's international terrorists have proven themselves to be very intelligent, well-financed, up on the latest electronic technology and willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause. Unfortunately, our nation's fire and emergency services leaders are not aware of the lessons learned by the fire and emergency services organizations of other nations (Israel, Northern Ireland, France, etc.) and we certainly don't have any organized forum to focus attention on this issue in this country. Therefore, I would like to submit this unsolicited proposal to FEMA for the IAFC to conduct a project to use our international and national fire and emergency services contacts to hold a forum to develop a training course (with training materials and AV support) to rapidly prepare our nation's fire and emergency services to respond to the unique challenges of international terrorist incidents. This course would be focused on the largest 120 fire & emergency services organizations in the US (which provide fire and emergency services to about 60% of our nation's population) and some carefully qualified other fire & emergency organizations (such as NYPD's Emergency Service Units, the chiefs of the various military fire agencies, US Park Service, etc.). I believe that time is of the essence, and I am prepared to meet with you as soon as possible to answer any questions that you may have or to provide you a briefing on the information that we have on this critical subject. Sincerely, Samf Garry L. Briese, CAE CC: IAFC Board of Directors |