| Title Page Previous Next Contents | Part 2. The day after: How officials responded >Multi-agency coordination |
Multi-agency coordination
In
the aftermath of any terrorist attack, the emergency response on the ground
would likely involve hundreds of offices and agencies across government and
across the land.
That
was the case in New York City, where dozens of agencies struggled to
re-establish connections to the city’s Emergency Operations Center in the first
hours and days of the tragedy. Steve
Touw, an On-Scene Coordinator with EPA’s Emergency Response team, arrived at
the World Trade Center on the morning of September 12th, having
spent the day before as a liaison to the city and FEMA and “finding out what
the city needed from the federal EPA.”
Initially
all the agencies were trying to re-establish communications. “Verizen just kept
adding phone lines, as so many were out,” said Touw.
In
days that followed, many national agencies would spill out of the D.C. area and
head to New York’s Ground Zero. At its peak, there were some 30 different city,
state and federal government agencies involved, more focused at the time on
evidence collection than environmental health, but still calling for
unprecedented coordination.
In
a television interview with NBC a month after the attacks, FEMA’S Director Joe
Allbaugh said, “You have over 26
federal, state and local agencies working together, it’s an unbelievable
site—folks working shoulder-to-shoulder; sifting over debris. I mean fine-tooth comb with rakes and a lot
of it by hand. They pull out and
segment, segregate the large items, the steel beams and whatnot. But it is a thorough, thorough process,
looking for any evidence, looking for individuals, remains of individuals, that
we can help families bring closure to those questions that they’re asking right
now. I’m very impressed with the organization
that they have.”
Matters
were not so straightforward when it came to coordinating who was doing what
with respect to environmental health.
 |
Sept 21, 2001—FEMA rescue workers. |
But
for every issue there were many overlapping agencies involved: like the issue
of protecting the rescue workers from the toxic dust in the air.
“I was getting a little rubbery,” he remembers.
“I had to come home and decompress. But
it was tough to sleep.”
“We
met three times a day to discuss the level of respiratory protection needed and
to analyze sampling data,” says McKinney.
Many
of those representatives from those agencies say they much appreciated those
regular calls and meetings to attempt to coordinate functions and eliminate
duplication.
“God
bless Kelly and his staff—for he put it under one command,” says Burger.
‘Anything affecting the environment was put under his command.”
Others
say that the meetings got fairly contentious. “Many of the safety people were
asking for the city and contractors to slow things down,” says Bruce Lippy.
“You don’t work 12 hour shifts for two weeks in a collapsed structure without
it getting to you.” For many, says Lippy, the psychological impacts alone were
physically bruising.
When
he came across a human hand with a candy bar still in it, he admits, he had to
pause. “I was getting a little rubbery,” he remembers. “I had to come home and
decompress. But it was tough to sleep.”
The
biggest criticism was that the environmental health effort lacked coordination.
Among the problems Mt. Sinai’s Landrigan identified: A “disorganized approach
to worker health and safety.” This, he feels, came about because of “unclear
lines of authority.” Other problems that would crop up included a lack of
health-based standards for certain chemicals that made their way into the air
and water. “These problems,” Landrigan warned, “must be addressed and the
necessary improvements to the system must be made, if mistakes are not to be
repeated in future disasters.”