Rush Is On to Boost Region's Response To Terror Attacks

By Steve Twomey and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 30, 2001; Page A01

Sept. 11 taught this, among so much else: Common radio channels would help. As an intractable, mammoth blaze raged at the stricken Pentagon, fire companies on the scene from Maryland could not communicate easily with those from Northern Virginia and Washington, said Edward P. Plaugher, Arlington County's fire chief, who had overall command at the scene. Portable radios had to be doled out. Runners had to be used.

Within the close confines of its disaster operations center that day, Fairfax County realized anew that it needs more space and more telephone lines. Montgomery County discovered the advantages of commandeering as many publicly funded cable channels as possible for quick contact with residents. The District learned it must seek technology that would give government telephones priority service, so its officials will not be rendered incommunicado again when land-line and cell networks clog in a crisis.

And strategies are being crafted to ensure that if the federal government frees its 240,000 workers during a terror attack, local jurisdictions have been tipped first, so they can police intersections, synchronize lights and reverse traffic lanes -- and avoid the paralysis of Sept. 11.

Emotionally shaken like the rest of the country, but galvanized as well, those responsible for public safety in Washington and its suburbs have been dissecting the events of nearly three weeks ago and have begun to shift their disaster assumptions and preparations in ways small and profound.

It is an after-action analysis underway within governments across the country, but one with a unique urgency here, where the pervasive presence of the federal government and the nation's premier monuments and museums renders the area a target like no other and adds complexity to the task of protecting the populace.

"The other day, I woke up sputtering, 'Do you have batteries? Do you have flashlights?' " said Peter G. LaPorte, the District's Emergency Management Agency chief. "My brain almost explodes with ideas of things I need to get."

Or things he needs to do. LaPorte said that the city has realized that the top floor of an eight-story building is not an ideal place for its emergency command center, not when hijackers are plunging 757s and 767s into landmarks or when someone could drive a truck bomb into the building's public, underground garage. So the city is weighing whether to move the center to ground-level quarters.

Not only do the reviews underway locally focus on the obvious -- security at reservoirs, power plants and public places -- but on government's response to an attack once it begins, including how to cull fact from fiction in a chaotic environment, how to keep communication links viable, how to evacuate.

Much as Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard states post signs telling residents which roads to use to flee hurricanes, District officials hope to more quickly empty downtown in the future by publicizing three or four main evacuation routes.

"We'll be one of the only cities in America to be able to move people out rapidly," Transportation Director Dan Tangherlini said. "And I'm not talking about a year from now. I'm talking right away."

He has asked contractors to estimate the cost of installing 100 video cameras at key intersections to monitor an exodus. The city has only four cameras now. And LaPorte wants $5 million to create a fire department team to respond to a chemical or biological attack, forms of terrorism suddenly at the forefront of possibilities. The city is supposed to have such a team, but its equipment is nearly obsolete, and its members rarely train, being used instead for routine firefighting.

Hospital officials are wondering whether they have enough outdoor showers to decontaminate victims of a chemical attack, so they do not taint emergency rooms. And although local trauma units had few casualties to treat on Sept. 11, the incident underscored how an attack that injures massive numbers would overwhelm hospitals.

"We don't have . . . what we call 'surge capacity,' " said Robert A. Malson, president of the District of Columbia Hospital Association.

In Montgomery County on the morning of Sept. 11, hundreds of workers at the main county government building in Rockville looked out to see employees at the state-run courthouse next door streaming out, having been allowed to go home. Although Montgomery County hoped to remain open to ensure government services, the sight of others leaving caused so much anxiety among county workers that they also were released.

"We need much better coordination," County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) said.

Indeed, some school systems closed early on Sept. 11, but others did not. And all schools were closed the next day, but all governments were open. It was a hodgepodge of responses that some officials feel confused the public about what and where the threats were, and how serious the situation was.

"It certainly does not convey a message of reassurance and stability," said Gerald E. Connolly (D-Providence), a Fairfax County supervisor and former chairman of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

There is a need for "an established set of criteria in the region" about what to close in any comparable moment of uncertainty and danger, Connolly said, even though local governments have traditionally been loath to surrender power to a group. To the extent possible, either everyone closes or everyone does not. "The region just has to bite the bullet," he said.

Over the years, emergency management teams in the District and suburbs have gained considerable experience coping with snowstorms, hurricanes and floods, but those are predictable emergencies that afford the luxury of deliberation and staging. Although disaster plans and drills have also considered the possibility of terrorism, no official had been through an emergency arising with such stunning speed and accompanied by galloping fear that unimaginable destruction could be inflicted in the next minute on any building, any intersection, any neighborhood.

Plaugher, the Arlington fire chief, likened the impact of Sept. 11 to someone who has long dreamed of buying a new $20,000 Corvette -- only to go to a showroom and find that Corvettes cost thousands more. "We are now at a reality check," he said.

At the Pentagon alone, Plaugher said, there were lessons for fire departments about adopting compatible communications and methods of accounting for firefighters; in controlling "freelancing," the practice of well-meaning, off-duty firefighters arriving to help but failing to report their presence; in compelling firefighters to rest during a marathon battle; even in using the same radio terms.

In many respects, local government did well during the uncertainty, with the possible exception of the District's, which has been chastised by Congress for poor preparation and communication. The Metro system functioned throughout, its officials rejecting the D.C. police department's suggestion that it shut down, which would have left tens of thousands of people with no way to get home. Governments activated command centers quickly, and many workers showed up unbidden to pitch in. At the Pentagon fire, Arlington County received ample help from the District and other suburban departments.

Amazingly, e-mail was one crucial way that District officials could keep in touch with each other.

But as local officials ponder what did not go well or what could be improved, perhaps nothing is drawing more attention than the decision by the federal Office of Personnel Management to release government workers, a decision made without consulting local officials and one with substantial effects on congestion. For example, George Gacser, Potomac Electric Power Co.'s manager of emergency management and communications, said the utility had no problems on Sept. 11, except for moving personnel around.

"It was a colossal federal failure," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). "Why didn't the federal government communicate to the District, instead of turning out federal employees into the streets and creating near panic?"

A federal official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said OPM tried to reach District officials in the minutes after American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon. But phone lines were jammed, and indeed Verizon spokesmen said the number of land-line and cell phone calls in the Washington area doubled on Sept. 11.

Outside, the official said, streets were already becoming gridlocked as public- and private-sector workers headed home of their own accord. "There was going to have to be a decision made," the official said. "We did not know if there were other planes." When OPM got through to a District government phone and asked about organizing a conference call of local officials, the person who answered replied that the situation was only "a federal issue," the official said, adding that he did not know the identity of the District employee.

At 9:58 a.m., 20 minutes after the Pentagon attack and without having been able to reach any high-ranking city official, OPM decided that the government would close and employees could leave if they wished.

Since then, federal and local officials have explored how to surmount such communication difficulties. Margret Nedelkoff Kellems, the city's deputy mayor for public safety, now has a designated contact at OPM, as well as at the White House. And city officials are looking into multiple options -- including more phones lines and special dial tones that give government calls priority -- to ensure that they can communicate not only with the federal government but each other.

"International terrorists have moved the game up a lot," said Suzanne J. Peck, the city's chief technology chief. "All sorts of things you didn't think of before are now popping into your head."