When aircraft plunged into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, it was frighteningly clear that all the government agencies dedicated to preventing terrorism had utterly failed. Yet the work of other government agencies ensured that 99% of the inhabitants of the WTC fortunate enough to be under the areas struck by the planes escaped. Yet in the months following the attacks, government attention has focused almost exclusively on preventive measures like the USA Patriot Act, a grab-bag of governmental powers, none of which would have stopped the terrorists of September 11.
This is understandable; actually preventing terrorism is very difficult, whereas it's quite easy for Congress to pass a package of laws they claim will help. And as long as President Bush pursues the war on terror vigorously, bin Laden and al Qaeda will have difficulty mounting significant coordinated terror attacks on America, allowing Congress to claim their laws are what have prevented other terrorist attacks. But sooner or later the war on terror will end, and assuming the United States will be unable to wipe out every single terror group in the world, once the war is over it's likely some other terror group may look to America's shores once again.
Although it is certainly possible law enforcement will stop the next terrorist threat to America, it would be imprudent not to prepare for some terrorist attack to be successful eventually. In that case, the question must be how we can best prepare ourselves to react to another day like September 11. As noted in the above article, the authorities at the World Trade Center had done an excellent job preparing for a terrorist attack, even though they had no idea what form such an attack might take. There were no federal guidelines on how to prepare for such attacks before September 11, and as yet, it is still a question whether federal guidelines will be issued. But the work of the Port Authority demonstrates the ability local authorities have to prepare for and react to such incidents.
Nobody can know precisely where terrorists may next strike. Terrorists will seek a different avenue of vulnerability, one we probably will only realize was there in hindsight. While it is incumbent on the authorities to do what they can to prevent such attacks, it is also important for local authorities to work on the assumption the terrorists will be successful. It's important we note this lesson of September 11, then, that local authorities can do a great deal to minimize the effects of terrorism. There have already been some calls for the federal government to address these questions, and the calls will only get louder if there is another successful attack.
Instead, those calls should be directed at local authorities, both governmental and nongovernmental. Unlike the World Trade Center, most buildings are owned by private businesses. They have just as much responsibility, if not more so, to ensure they have planned appropriately for possible emergencies. Every local business that puts together its own emergency plan does two things; it takes pressure off local authorities, and it is far more likely to develop a plan that is optimized for that business' unique circumstances. Local authorities should then do the same for events it may have to address, since each city and town has its own unique mix of targets that may be struck and assets available to alleviate those problems.
It has been argued that part of the reason the United States was caught off guard on September 11 was that the federal government has taken too many tasks to itself, rather than leaving more to state and local governments. But it left disaster contingency plans alone, and the result was thousands of lives saved. Let's hope that lesson is not forgotten.
Thanks to Kathy Kinsley for the link to the original article.