NCR’s Rapid Response

At 9:37 a.m., on Sept. 11, 2001, a hijacked American Airlines Boeing 757 plunged into the west wall of the Pentagon. Everyone on the airliner — 64 people — died on impact. Inside the Pentagon, 70 civilians and 55 military service personnel died. More than 100 people were injured.

The 9/11 Commission Report points out that the attack on the Pentagon “would be remembered as a singular challenge and an extraordinary national story” had it happened on any other day. But the catastrophe at the World Trade Center in New York upstaged reports of the Pentagon tragedy and stories of the professional response by numerous agencies from jurisdictions across the National Capital Region (NCR).

“Arlington and the surrounding jurisdictions did a very good job of responding that day,” recalls Dennis Schrader, director of Homeland Security for the State of Maryland in Annapolis and part of the NCR’s emergency response planning team.

The 9/11 Commission agreed. According to its report, local, regional and federal agencies arrived at the Pentagon within minutes of the attack. As with any plane crash and fire, the Arlington County Fire Department assumed the role of incident commander. Other responders included Arlington’s police and sheriff’s departments, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Fire Department, Fort Myer Fire Department, the Virginia State Police, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the FBI, FEMA, a National Medical Response Team, The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and military personnel.

Arlington County Fire took over at 9:41 a.m., just four minutes after the crash. At the same time, according to the account by the 9/11 Commission, the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center contacted the fire departments of Fairfax County, Alexandria and the District of Columbia and requested assistance under mutual aid agreements long in place.

At 9:55 a.m., no more than 18 minutes after the crash, the incident commander ordered an evacuation of the area of the Pentagon struck by the plane because a partial collapse appeared imminent. Two minutes later a section of the building did collapse. No first responder was injured.

Over the next hour, reports of additional hijacked aircraft approaching the scene led to two more evacuations. The 9/11 Commission called those moves well communicated and well coordinated.

Grading the response by local, state and federal agencies in the National Capital Region as “generally effective,” the 9/11 Commission also noted that the experiences of first responders at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center cannot be compared, given the massive scope of the disaster in New York.

Nevertheless, by all accounts, first responders in the NCR gave a good account of themselves on Sept. 11, largely because they had been drilling cross-jurisdictional responses under the Incident Command System — a formal emergency response management concept — for quite some time. Since then, they have been planning and drilling to improve, just in case there is a next time.

The NCR approach to post-Sept. 11 emergency response planning, organization and training might serve as a model for other regions as they attempt to work toward effective cooperation.

Evaluating the Sept. 11 response

The “Arlington County: After-Action Report,” written after Sept. 11, acknowledged problems encountered during the response effort: “Organizations, response units and individuals proceeding on their own initiative directly to an incident site, without the knowledge and permission of the host jurisdiction and the Incident Commander, complicate the exercise of command, increase the risks faced by bona fide responders, and exacerbate the challenge of accountability.”

Like first responders at the World Trade Center, Pentagon responders also had difficulty with communications technology. Cell phones did not work. Radio frequencies were clogged with traffic. Pagers worked, but few had them.

Since Sept. 11, the goal for NCR Homeland security has been to solve those problems and to add capabilities.

Improved access control at incident sites

Today, the NCR stands as the first region in the country to implement a smart ID card that provides machine-read verification of the identity and access permissions of a first responder. At incident sites, managers now carry handheld card readers that check permissions and allow or deny admittance to local, state and federal personnel with access rights.

Called the First Responder Partnership Initiative (FRPI), the program was designed to help manage personnel access at disaster scenes. The card technology meets FIPS 201 and 14443 contactless standards and is recognized across all NCR federal, state and local multi-jurisdictions.

The cards also contain technology that allows their use for everyday access to doors and computers.

Perhaps more importantly, the initiative was conceived as a model for other regions to use to enhance cooperation between state and local first responders and their federal counterparts. “I encourage state and local governments to adopt the interoperable technology to support mutual aid across jurisdictional lines,” says Tom Lockwood, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of National Capital Region Coordination.

Improved NCR communications since Sept. 11

According to Ed Reiskin, Washington, D.C.’s deputy mayor for public safety and justice, the NCR had been working to build interoperable voice communications systems for first responders since before Sept. 11. Although it has taken a number of years, the region now has that capability.

Firefighters and police officers can now talk to each other by radio across jurisdictions throughout the NCR. Most of these conversations take place without the need for technological fixes. In Prince George’s County, however, other NCR jurisdictions must use an audio switch that creates a bridge to Prince George’s County’s UHF voice system. That problem will be solved within two years when Prince George’s County installs a new radio system that will allow its first responders to talk directly to others without a technological bridge.

The NCR is also working on the problem of interoperable data systems that will support the voice capabilities.

About a year ago, the District introduced the first citywide, broadband, wireless, interoperable public safety network in the country. The Wireless Accelerated Responder Network (WARN) allows federal, state and local jurisdictions to communicate via broadband throughout the District and allows for the real-time sharing of voice and video among first responders. The system has demonstrated real-time wireless helicopter and patrol car video sharing; the integration of traffic cameras for incident management; and weather radar.

The District is also building its own secure broadband network for wired and wireless communications. “We need this kind of infrastructure so that we do not have to rely solely on the commercial infrastructure, which often is not available during a crisis,” Reiskin says.

Maryland now has a data communications system called CapWIN or Capital Wireless Integrated Network. It provides text and data communications for police, fire and transportation first responders. Users must have mobile data computers in their vehicles.

There is also a regional incident management system called Web EOC, a Web-based emergency operations center software. “We have installed this in all of Maryland’s jurisdictions and emergency operations systems,” Schrader says. “Now it is migrating to DC and Virginia.”

Web EOC functions as an incident management system that can be accessed via the Web. It enables incident commanders to manage resources and track events as they unfold. Like CapWIN, Web EOC offers text and data communications, but not voice.

Officials also note that these data and text systems do not add up to a mature interoperable data communications capability. That is still under construction.

A controversial NCR strategy

While working to improve problems encountered on Sept. 11, the NCR has also been drafting a Homeland Security Strategic Plan designed to deal with the unique security challenges presented by the nation’s capital. The plan lists four strategic goals:

• planning and decision-making;
• community engagement;
• prevention and mitigation; and
• response and recovery.

In the plan, each strategic goal comes with a number of objectives. But that is where it ends and where a dust-up has begun.

In response to Congressional requests, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported on NCR strategic planning a number of times since 2004. The most recent report appeared on March 29 of this year and stated in its recommendations: “Although we include no new recommendations in this statement, GAO continues to recommend that the ONCRC (Office of National Capital Region Coordination) work with the NCR jurisdictions to quickly complete a coordinated strategic plan to establish and monitor the achievement of regional goals and priorities.”

To complete the plan, the GAO wants NRC officials to develop initiatives that will accomplish objectives listed under strategic goals; performance measures and targets that indicate how the initiatives will accomplish identified strategic goals; milestones or timeframes for initiative accomplishment; information on the resources and investments for each initiative; organizational roles, responsibilities and coordination; and integration and implementation plans.

The U.S. Senate and The Washington Post editorial page picked up the theme. The Post complained on April 3 about the “startling news” that the Washington region lacks a strategic plan to guide preparations for future attacks.

Schrader objects to the newspaper’s characterization of strategic planning as a guide for preparation for future attacks. He particularly bristles at the contention that the capital region has no operational plans. “That is not true,” he says. “The strategic plan is the baseline for building new capability. But every jurisdiction in the capital region is ready and has a functioning operational plan.”

“But we are vulnerable here,” says Robert P. Crouch, Jr., assistant to the Governor (of Virginia) for Commonwealth Preparedness. “We had made a commitment to have a strategic plan completed by last fall. Still, I think the criticism is unfair. The critics failed to recognize that strategic and operational plans are different. The jurisdictions in the NCR have operational plans that are in place and practiced every day.”

Schrader points out that the NCR is not an operational entity like the State of Maryland or the City of Washington, D.C. “There is no Mayor of NCR,” he says.

And that is how the NCR strategy should be understood, Schrader continues. To him, the strategy’s first goal of planning and decision-making is the most important statement in the document. “It talks about how we work together to make decisions about priorities,” he says. “Our challenge is to understand where the gaps between the jurisdictions are and how to close them. Our job is to prioritize investments of grant money in public health, emergency medical response and radio communications. How can we knit the jurisdictions together more effectively?”

While the jurisdictions set up exercises to test their response plans and their operational abilities to coordinate responses with other jurisdictions, NCR officials discuss, plan and make decisions about community engagement, prevention and mitigation, and response and recovery.

“There is no magic to this,” Schrader says. “It is constant, ongoing communication with people in jurisdictions, in companies, and in non-profit agencies. In doing this job, I have gotten to know hundreds of people in the capital region that I had no need to know 10 years ago.”

What comes after these basics? “We’ll be working on the basics for a while,” Schrader says. “I don’t like to get too exotic.”

SideNote

What is the National Capital Region?

With the National Capital Planning Act of 1952, Congress created the National Capital Region. The Act defined the NCR as the District of Columbia; Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland; and Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon and Prince William Counties in Virginia. It also includes all cities within these counties.

All told, the NCR includes the District of Columbia and eleven local jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia. It is the fourth largest metropolitan area in the U.S. It generates nearly $288.3 billion in revenues per year, the fourth largest regional economy in the nation. Within the region there are:

• 4.2 million Americans

• 20 million tourists per year

• 6,000 square miles

• The three branches of the federal government: executive, judicial, and legislative

• 231 federal departments and agencies

• 340,000 federal workers

• Headquarters for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for American States.

• 2,100 non-profit organizations

• More than 40 colleges and universities with more than 130,000 students

• 47 Inc. 500 companies

• 2 major airports