ARMY BASES STILL VULNERABLE?

“Pentagon inspec­tors say police, fire­fight­ers and doc­tors are still inad­e­quately pre­pared to respond to attacks using weapons of mass destruc­tion against Army bases even though the Army had tried, in vain, to improve that after the 9/​11 attacks.“
That’s the story from the Deseret Morning News, which says that “‘plans to imple­ment an Installation Preparedness Program for first respon­ders were sub­stan­tially frag­mented and inef­fec­tive,” accord­ing to an Army Audit Agency report.

For exam­ple, the report com­plained that one set of Army offi­cials and rules over­saw police; another set of offi­cials and rules gov­erned fire­fight­ers; and a third, sep­a­rate set over­saw med­ical per­son­nel.
Inspectors said that not only did those groups not coor­di­nate with each other, they often failed to con­sult spe­cial response teams and other Army experts on bio­log­i­cal, chem­i­cal and radi­o­log­i­cal weapons to develop train­ing cri­te­ria and equip­ment lists.
Inspectors said while the Army had meant to sep­a­rate and assign key roles to ensure they were accom­plished, “the unin­tended result was a lack of coor­di­na­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion between key Army pro­po­nents and tech­ni­cal experts to col­lec­tively address instal­la­tion pre­pared­ness issues related to first respon­ders.
(From a tip by Phil Carter, who’s got a dyna­mite story on the Fallujah mosque shoot­ing in today’s Slate.)

November 18th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.