Folks,
Jed Babbin has a great op piece in the American Spectator today. Check it out at http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8728
Here's some of it:
"Those obstacles [to interstate first responder cooperation] are akin to those that used to prevent interstate cooperation using National Guard resources. There is an interstate agreement now that enables governors to share National Guard forces at their own discretion. We need another agreement just like it to enable sharing police, fire, ambulance and other first-responders just as easily. (There is one, run by the National Emergency Management Association. It doesn't work because it's tied up in lawyers and red tape. It has to be replaced, right bloody now, with a government-to-government agreement.) [emph added] If I'm sitting in Austin with a few hundred bored rescue crews sitting by their helos sipping Gatorade and munching PowerBars, and you're in Jefferson Parish up to your waist in water, why shouldn't you get on the phone and ask me to send my guys to you without standing on ceremony? If Judge Chertoff doesn't get such an agreement in place before the end of this week, we should say adios, amigo, and get lost. Amateur hour is over."
Jed is right that we need (I would say at a minimum) an interstate agreement to share first responders during a disaster. However, I would go one step further. For the fastest mobilization, we need a pre-existing scalable structure to plug people in to (http://procrastinus.typepad.com/blog/2005/09/surging_law_enf_1.html). Reduce the confusion about where to go for help and where to go to offer help. Get all the bureuacratic stuff (4 hour EO classes anyone?) done ahead of time, maybe on an annual basis.
Especially for a no-notice disaster or WMD strike, we need to activate and move immediately.
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