Learning from 9/11 for future crises

Two days after the attacks on the World Trade Center, James Kendra and four others from the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center were headed to New York to study how it would respond to its greatest crisis ever.

They quickly obtained access to the Office of Emergency Management, the Family Assistance Center, and the facilities set up to care for the exhausted rescue workers. From their observations, they concluded that creativity and improvisation – such as the Coast Guard, ferries, and anything else that could float moving 1 million people – are important in responding to such disasters.

"Our objective in disaster research is to learn what can be applied to future situations, to improve planning and improve responses," says Dr. Kendra, the research coordinator.

The University of Delaware researchers are far from being the only ones on such a mission. Over the past year, structural engineers, disaster specialists, private consultants, and the federal government have been busy interviewing, analyzing, and trying to draw lessons from Sept. 11. Some of the studies are already done, while others are just beginning. Emergency officials around the nation will read most of them and discuss them at conferences.

By the time everything is completed, "it will one of the most intensely studied disasters in the history of the United States," says Kendra.

Still, assessing performance after Sept. 11 can be touchy. At a press conference, Mayor Michael Bloomberg emphasized that the reports were not trying to lay blame on anyone. In fact, in a recently released study on the police and fire departments' response, the uniformed services are praised for their heroic efforts. Yet as John Odermatt, head of the city's Office of Emergency Management, says, "I don't think any agency can afford not to look at what they did."

Indeed, many agencies are reviewing how they performed. Last week, for example, New York released the report on the police and fire response. The study, conducted by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., found problems with the New York Police Department in six of 16 categories, including such important areas as traffic access for emergency vehicles and the postcollapse search for survivors.

The McKinsey study also cited the New York Fire Department for a communications system that failed. Twelve minutes before the towers came down, for example, emergency operators – who were overwhelmed with calls – started to hear from people in the towers that the floors were collapsing. That information apparently did not get to the right people.

Even if it had, the report points out that the repeaters (electronic amplifiers) in the high-rise apparently did not work well enough, so it's likely many of the firefighters never heard the call to abandon the towers.

Page: 1 | 2