'Another 9/11 will be more devastating'

NEW DELHI: Nearly two years after 9/11, the United States remains "dangerously unprepared" to handle a catastrophic attack on American soil, particularly one involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-impact conventional weapons, a leading US think tank has warned.
"If the nation does not take immediate steps to better identify and address the urgent needs of emergency responders, the next terrorist incident could be even more devastating than 9/11," an independent task force, sponsored by Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based nonpartisan national membership organisation, has revealed.
The United States is drastically underfunding local emergency responders and according to budget experts a total of $98.4 billion is needed to establish a minimum effective response to a catastrophic terrorist attack.
Based on the task force findings, the council in its latest communique lamented that funding for emergency responders has been sidetracked and stalled due to a politicised appropriations process, slowness in the distribution of the funds by federal agencies, and bureaucratic red tape at all levels of government.
The central findings of Independent Task Force on Emergency Responders, a blue-ribbon panel of Nobel laureates, US military leaders, former high-level government officials, and other senior experts, were under the guidance of former Senator Warren B Rudman and advised by former White House terrorism and cyber-security chief Richard A Clarke.
Currently the federal budget to fund emergency responders is $27 billion for five years beginning in 2004. Because record keeping and categorisation of state and local spending varies greatly across states and localities, the experts could not estimate a single total five-year expenditure by state and local governments.
Their best judgment is that state and local spending over the same period could be as low as $26 billion and as high as $76 billion. Therefore, total estimated spending for emergency responders by federal, state and local governments combined would be between $53 and $103 billion for the five years beginning in financial year 2004.
The council report marks the first time that data from emergency responder communities has been brought together to estimate national needs.
"While we have put forth the best estimates so far on emergency responder needs, the nation must urgently develop a better framework and procedures to generate guidelines on national preparedness," said Rudman, who served as Task Force chair.
"And the government cannot wait to increase desperately needed funding to emergency responders until it has these standards in place," the council release quoting him said.
However, the task force credits the Bush administration, Congress, governors and mayors for taking important steps since 9/11 to respond to the risk of catastrophic terrorism, and does not seek to apportion blame about what has not been done or not done quickly enough.
"This report is an important preliminary step in a process of developing national standards and determining national needs for emergency responders," said Council President Leslie H Gelb, "but the report also highlights the need for much more work to be done in this area."
The task force, based its analysis on data provided by front-line emergency responders--firemen, policemen, emergency medical workers, public health providers and others--whose lives depend upon the adequacy of their preparedness for a potential terrorist attack.
Various suggestions were put forward by the task force including Congress should require that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) work with state and local agencies and officials and emergency responder professional associations to establish clearly defined standards and guidelines for emergency preparedness.