Local Team Response Communication Hitches

Local Team Response

Communication hitches in the Oklahoma City bombing

At 9:02 A.M., Wednesday, April 19, 1995 Oklahoma city became a victim of terrorist attack. This took place at the Alfred P. Murrah building which housed several government agencies as well as a good number of visitors (the Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management, 1995).

There were several issues that came up as to contributing to the inefficiencies that were experienced during the search and rescue process. One of the central issues was the communication aspect. This paper looks at the communication issues that plagued the search and rescue (SAR) teams that responded to the incident.

The first problem that was noted was the difficulty in passing information from one SAR to another. It is noted that due to this lack of quick communication, critical information on the search and rescue were passed through couriers that were equipped with golf carts as there were no interoperable communication channels (Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security, 2012).

It was also noted that due to the confusion that ensued from the blast as well as communications that were not emergency related, the communication between responders was highly limited. It is indicated that during the initial 12 to 18 hours after the incident, the cellular phones circuit were overloaded hence limiting quick communication among the SARs. This was also made worse by other non-emergency calls clogging the standard phone lines and in effect hindering quick communication (Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security, 2012: Pp 38-39).

The SAR also suffered a general weakness in passing information among the rescuers that responded. This was occasioned by the relocation of the Incident Command Post three different times coupled by the numerous local, state as well as federal agencies. This great number saw the presence of at least seven Mobile Command Posts that coordinated numerous support functions. This paradoxically meant there was fragmented information forwarded by the seven different MCPs hence great confusion between agencies. The multiple chains of communication delayed delivery or availing of service or items requested.

2. Hurricane Katrina

This has been the worst hurricane situation in the entire history of the U.S.A. since the destruction on property and loss of lives was of immeasurable magnitude. Following the meteorological reports about the impending hurricane, President Bush declared the hurricane an Incident of National Significance (INS). Interestingly, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary general, Michael Chertoff did not seem to realize the significance of the declaration by the president. He ended up declaring another INS several days later and even then did not activate the national Response Plan (NRP) and the Catastrophic Incident Annex (CIA) in particular despite being the only person who can declare this (Department of Homeland Security, 2004: Pp 1). This decision, he later tried to clarify was based on the fact that CIA was meant for no-notice events like terrorism attacks. It is however noted in the CIA supplement that it is also meant for short-notice incidences and explicitly picks out hurricanes to be one of these (Homeland Security, 2005).

The inability to fashion a well codified command was attributed to the confusion with new policies that had been introduced in the NRP as an improvement following the 9/11 incident. Responders had not been trained to the new adjustments and hence the great confusion about the new rules and failures in coordination among the responders.

As a result of the failure to initiate comprehensively the CIA, there was lack of mobilization of resources commensurate to the level of the catastrophe in good time. It is noteworthy that the first trucks that supplied food from the U.S. army arrived at the superdome on September 2, 2005 despite having had the first alert from the National Hurricane Center in Miami on August 23, 2005 and even a statement from the president highlighting the potential dangers of the Hurricane on August 27 and consequently declaring it INS (National Geographic news, 2010).

It also resulted in uncoordinated response pattern to the disaster. Even though the disaster saw the largest mobilization of both human resources and the supplies, the desired effect was not achieved in terms of alleviating the suffering of the displaced. There were incidences of the army having supplies but no requests came in for the supplies from FEMA which was supposed to be initiating that.

The lack of the CIA activation also meant there was no unified command on the ground hence the delay of the arrival of the active duty-federal troops in New Orleans. Even though there were in excess of 50,000 troops sent with resources from over 49 states, the operations did not proceed efficiently due to lack of the command from federal Northern Command, which was overseeing the large-scale deployments and operations of the active-duty military (Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 2006:Pp11).

3. Politics and decision making process

In the event of any disaster, be it natural or an act of terrorism, there is always an attempt to politicize the process of making decisions particularly relating to the search and rescue and general response after the disaster. The frequency of this trend is exacerbated by the fact that most of those involved in the decision making process are there thanks to elective process. This complicates issues as they would all want to make or push a decision on the popularity grounds with the next electioneering process in mind. The danger with this is the resultant short-term solutions that are confined to the election cycle and most of the decisions die with the exit of the politician upon failure to be re-elected.

There are several dangers associated with politicization of decision making process. There is a likelihood of compromising the standards of the services to be offered or the procedures to be followed in the event that an emergency is encountered, this will mean the interest differing political stands will not adhere to the standard way of operation and in effect interfere with the entire process (Sherman Kent Center, 2007).