Homeland Security and Criminal Justice Administration

Homeland Security and Criminal Justice Administration

OPSEC and site security

Importance of personal accountability at scene of incident

Personnel accountability mechanisms are the most important in any rescue operations to ensure that rescuers strive to protect themselves and mandatory at emergency scenes. Moreover, this system helps track the rescuers' identification, their role and location during emergency. It also ensures only authorized personnel who are trained and have been provided with specific instruction are operating within the scene of the incident. In most cases, these systems employ the use of badges, lists, tags, use of bar code readers and radio frequency identification (IAFC & NFPA, 2009). Electronically-based systems, such as bar codes and RFIDs, are more often capable of relaying real-time information that can be transmitted to several stations at the same time providing more efficient monitoring and evaluation.

All rescuers in any rescue mission are responsible and accountable for their safety at the incident scene. Therefore, they are expected to abide to the accountability systems put in place. Some of the measures taken to enhance personal accountability may include establishing written guidelines to be used as an inventory of all members involved in any operation. Members will also be expected to follow these guidelines with strict adherence and must comply with the accountability systems being used. An incident leader or rather commander will take responsibility for keeping a worksheet that details all the accountability protocols and is expected to maintain this worksheet throughout the operation. In incidents where the personnel are sub-divided into smaller teams, their team leaders shall be responsible for maintaining the accountability system within that team. Moreover, the incident commander is mandated to limit access to the area where the incident has happened using the appropriate identification procedures that is stipulated within the accountability system. This accounting system should also have provisions to ensure proper tracking of members responding to the emergency and their respective assignments. It is also proper that a dedicated communication channel be established to enable effective warning of personnel in case of imminent dangers that might be detected (Angle, Harlow, Gala, Lombardo, Maciuba, 2011). These practices are some of the practical ways that personnel accountability can be implemented to enhance security of rescuers and other personnel dealing with emergencies.

Operations Security (OPSEC) is a process of indentifying, controlling, and protecting classified information on an on-going mission or operation. This enables a thorough process of predicting leakages of sensitive information and correcting these loopholes. Site security involves measures and procedures taken at the place of occurrence of an incident to safeguard any evidence and also prevent further damage by identifying secondary harmful objects. The importance of site security is the prevention of further harm to responders, collect evidence to ascertain the probable cause of the incident and allow proper handling of the effects of the incident without many interruptions (Maniscalco & Christen, 2011).

Fig.1: The OPSEC process

Several of principles have been effectuated with an aim of addressing issues regarding protocols, structures and practices at emergency scenes. These standards are contained the Incident Management/Unified Command (IM/UC) structure. These measures were established after the unfortunate incident in U.S. At the World Trade Center where gapping inconsistencies became apparent with problems between the various agencies involved and disagreements on establishment of a chain of command. If proper structures were in place then, such as the IM/UC structure, some of these issues might not have arisen (Maniscalco & Christen, 2011).

In some incidents, such as after a terrorist attack, which at times is very hard to predict, requires a framework for responders that is flexible enough and also allows for swift decision-making. Thorough preparation and planning is also necessary. This is so because the responders, including rescuers, medical personnel and security forces may become instant targets for the terrorist. It is essentially vital to ascertain that the security of all the stakeholders involved. In order to achieve these objectives, and after careful review of previous mistakes by responders to incidents, this structure was established to focusing on two major categories. The first category focuses on rescuing of victims immediately after the incident, taking care of personnel needs such as shifts, protective gear and equipment. Furthermore, organization of the operation to ensure proper communication and inter-agency cohesion is emphasized. Moreover, this category deals with the issue of public relations to ensure the general public is fully informed about the situation at the incident scene. The second category deals with issues that are specific to incidents related to acts of terrorism and mainly focus on searching for any possible secondary materials that can cause further damage to personnel, establishing a perimeter and controlling access, control of the general public and finally, collection and protection of any evidence (Maniscalco & Christen, 2011).

Proper planning of OPSEC and site security is very important for the welfare of the responders. For example, in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, there were a lot of contaminants, mainly cadmium and Freon, and most of the responders who arrived to arrest the situation had to be treated due to exposure to these contaminants. Another unfortunate incident happened in Tokyo in 1997 after sarin attacks; most of the medical personnel (approximately 20%) developed undesirable symptoms caused by exposure since they were not having any protective clothing while attending to victims of the contamination (Maniscalco & Christen, 2011). These two examples portray how crucial OPSEC and site security are to the overall safety and well-being of personnel involved in any operation.

Preparation for a chemical attack