Yesterday the United States conducted a drill of our new, national alert system; it tested our country’s ability to alert the entire nation on a moment's notice. Gone is the old system that encouraged states, counties, cities and municipalities to independently and randomly test their sectors of the national alert system. A new and improve method to simultaneously alert all states has arrived. Its arrival, however, leads to the next question, “Once we are alerted (Step 1), are we prepare to effectively and efficiently transition and mobilize (Step 2) in such a manner that social and economic damages, and human harm and lost of lives are minimized?” The current answer is “yes.” But with each passing day, the social and economic policies in the United States make its citizens less prepared and more unable to respond to its national crises.
At first glance, however, the growing inability of American citizens to respond to crises is difficult to see. After all, we hear the news about unexpected floods, fire, snow storm, tornados, and hurricanes; and in every case we see and hear reports of American volunteers springing into action. We see, hear and read accounts of neighbors, friends, family members, and ―perfect strangers risking their lives to help others. While these examples are wonderful illustrations of the American spirit of teamwork, cooperation, and humanity ― or moral and Christian values, which remain strong in the United States, they do not summon the types of wide-spread, coordinated efforts a large scale national crisis requires.
A crisis 40 times the size of Katrina, involving several states, require interstate transition, mobilization, and coordination beyond anything we have experienced as a nation. It require the deployment of food, clothing, shelter, and medical supplies beyond anything we’ve encountered in recent times, and it require the employment of skilled human resources that can quickly create a unified plan and begin to work effectively in concert with each other.
Until recently I never worried about the United States ability to effectively create and execute this type of plan on any scale. I felt that we had the mechanism in place to enable us to do so. Essentially, I have always believed that one of the great benefits of having a vibrant public employee work force was the ability of its law enforcement personnel, fire fighters, social workers, nurses, doctors, teachers, and school administrators to take the lead in creating staging areas, establishing information centers, constructing homeless shelters, and erecting medical facilities at public schools, municipal facilities (parks and recreation areas) and government buildings. I also believed that the interstate networks, which current exist in these professions, would serve the nation very well in times of crisis.
What concerns me now, however, is the fact that we are reducing the size of these professions, privatizing important government agencies, destroying their interstate networks, and getting rid of the facilities that would be utilized in times of crisis. In short, we are more prepared than ever before to alert American citizens that there is a fire, but we are less prepared than ever before to put the fire out.
I am trying very hard to be optimistic about the future of this country, but the lack of vision by our leaders in government is making it very difficult for me to do so.
By
James A. Porter
