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St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
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Thursday, October 11, 2001
Main
'FIRST RESPONDERS' ILL-PREPARED//FIREFIGHTERS, POLICE AND DOCTORS SEEK
REINFORCEMENTS AND AID
From news services
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS The War on Terrorism
WASHINGTON -- Local firefighters, police, paramedics and
emergency-room doctors on the front line of homeland security say they
are ill-equipped and underfunded when it comes to fighting terrorists.
All want reinforcements and new supplies. Today, fire-fighting groups
will ask Congress for 75,000 additional firefighters nationwide at a
cost of $3.2 billion a year, plus $1 billion a year for new equipment.
On Wednesday, health, water and emergency-management officials said
they, too, need more federal help. Water plants alone want $5 billion.
Less than 5 cents of every dollar the federal government spends on
domestic counter-terrorism goes to these state and local "first
responders," according to the Center for Non-proliferation Studies in
Monterey, Calif. The center found less than $400 million of the roughly
$9 billion the federal government spent on counter-terrorism in the last
fiscal year went to local "first responders."
Most went to federal law enforcement, intelligence and national
security agencies.
But it's local firefighters, police and paramedics whose responses
make the difference "between life and death," Dr. Kathryn Brinsfield,
training director for Boston's emergency medical services, told a House
Commerce oversight subcommittee Wednesday.
"It's time that the federal government recognizes that," Garry Briese,
executive director of the Fairfax, Va.-based International Association
of Fire Chiefs, said in an interview.
The federal government responds well to disasters, said former Federal
Emergency Management Agency director James Lee Witt. But it takes 12 to
14 hours for federal help to arrive, he continued, and local rescue
workers are on their own until then.
"We need to do more," Bruce Baughman, FEMA's director of planning and
readiness, told lawmakers. Added Las Vegas emergency-management chief
Bob Andrews, president-elect of the International Association of
Emergency Managers: "We don't have the luxury of waiting for Congress to
move. We've got to be better prepared for tomorrow, possibly."
The General Accounting Office, Congress' watchdog arm, reported
Wednesday that 255 local governments and all 50 states have received or
are scheduled to receive some kind of training for terror attacks. But
"even those cities receiving federal aid are still not adequately
prepared," the GAO concluded.
Among first-responders in the Sept. 11 attack, firefighters suffered
the heaviest losses -- 340 dead in New York -- and they are pushing
hardest for reinforcements.
Lawmakers were told Wed-nesday the FBI has found no credible threats
to the nation's reservoirs, dams, and power and chemical plants. But
Mike Parker, administrator for civil projects for the Army Corps of
Engineers, replied that "the answer can only be a reluctant, sobering
yes" to the question posed by the hearing on whether America's water
re-sources were at risk.
"We now realize that we will have to plan for the unimaginable," said
Patrick Karney, Cin-cinnati's sewer director and spokesman for the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies.
The Knight Ridder Washington Bureau and the Associated Press
contributed to this report.