Local Planning for Terror and Disaster gives voice to experts in key fields involved with local preparedness, assessing the quality of preparedness in each field, and offering directions for improvement. Introductory chapters provide overviews of terror medicine, security and communications, which are indispensable to successful preparedness, while subsequent chapters concentrate on a particular field and how responders from that field communicate and interact with others during and after an event. Thus, a chapter by a physician discusses not only the doctor's role but how that role is, or should be, coordinated with emergency medical technicians and police. Similarly, chapters by law enforcement figures also review police responsibilities and interactions with nurses, EMTs, volunteers and other relevant responders. Developed from topics at recent Symposia on Terror Medicine and Security, Local Planning also encompasses aspects of emergency and disaster medicine, as well as techniques for diagnosis, rescue, coordination and security that are distinctive to a terrorist attack. Each chapter also includes a case study that demonstrates preparedness, or lack thereof, for a real or hypothetical event, including lessons learned, next steps, and areas for improvement in this global era which increasingly calls for preparedness at a local level.

The Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) program of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) provides funds to major U. S. cities to help them develop plans for coping with the health and medical consequences of a terrorist attack with chemical, biological, or radiological (CBR) agents. DHHS asked the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to assist in assessing the effectiveness of the MMRS program by developing appropriate evaluation methods, tools, and processes to assess both its own management of the program and local preparedness in the cities that have participated in the program. This book provides the managers of the MMRS program and others concerned about local capabilities to cope with CBR terrorism with three evaluation tools and a three-part assessment method. The tools are a questionnaire survey eliciting feedback about the management of the MMRS program, a table of preparedness indicators for 23 essential response capabilities, and a set of three scenarios and related questions for group discussion. The assessment method described integrates document inspection, a site visit by a team of expert peer reviewers, and observations at community exercises and drills.

Meant to aid State & local emergency managers in their efforts to develop & maintain a viable all-hazard emergency operations plan. This guide clarifies the preparedness, response, & short-term recovery planning elements that warrant inclusion in emergency operations plans. It offers the best judgment & recommendations on how to deal with the entire planning process -- from forming a planning team to writing the plan. Specific topics of discussion include: preliminary considerations, the planning process, emergency operations plan format, basic plan content, functional annex content, hazard-unique planning, & linking Federal & State operations.

Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101 provides guidelines on developing emergency operations plans (EOP). It promotes a common understanding of the fundamentals of risk-informed planning and decision making to help planners examine a hazard or threat and produce integrated, coordinated, and synchronized plans. The goal of CPG 101 is to make the planning process routine across all phases of emergency management and for all homeland security mission areas. This Guide helps planners at all levels of government in their efforts to develop and maintain viable all-hazards, all-threats EOPs. Accomplished properly, planning provides a methodical way to engage the whole community in thinking through the life cycle of a potential crisis, determining required capabilities, and establishing a framework for roles and responsibilities. It shapes how a community envisions and shares a desired outcome, selects effective ways to achieve it, and communicates expected results. Each jurisdiction's plans must reflect what that community will do to address its specific risks with the unique resources it has or can obtain.

The Oklahoma City bombing, intentional crashing of airliners on September 11, 2001, and anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have made Americans acutely aware of the impacts of terrorism. These events and continued threats of terrorism have raised questions about the impact on the psychological health of the nation and how well the public health infrastructure is able to meet the psychological needs that will likely result. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism highlights some of the critical issues in responding to the psychological needs that result from terrorism and provides possible options for intervention. The committee offers an example for a public health strategy that may serve as a base from which plans to prevent and respond to the psychological consequences of a variety of terrorism events can be formulated. The report includes recommendations for the training and education of service providers, ensuring appropriate guidelines for the protection of service providers, and developing public health surveillance for preevent, event, and postevent factors related to psychological consequences.

In policy and practice, FEMA has generally addressed the key lessons learned from its experience in coordinating federal consequence management activities after the Oklahoma City bombing. In analyzing the lessons learned after the bombing, FEMA identified three major actions that needed to be taken: (1) create guidance to facilitate agencies' coordinated response to terrorist events, (2) ensure that state and local emergency plans terrorism, the Federal Response Plan, and (3) establish an adequate number of emergency response teams to deal with mass casualties. Improvements in these areas have been made across the board. FEMA has updated the Federal Response Plan to address how federal agencies, states, and localities would work together to respond to an act of terrorism, and states are increasingly modeling their emergency operations plans on the federal plan. Also, the number of teams available for emergency response to deal with mass casualties has doubled since 1995. In response to a PDD 39 requirement and to ensure that states are prepared to respond to a terrorist incident, FEMA assessed states' capabilities for consequence management in 1995 and set up a system to continue monitoring those capabilities. In 1997, FEMA reported to the Congress and to the President that the states had the basic capabilities to respond to disasters but were not well prepared for a terrorist incident involving a weapon of mass destruction. The agency has also expanded terrorism preparedness training grants and systematically incorporated terrorism preparedness courses into its emergency management curriculum. On the federal level, FEMA coordinates extensively with other involved agencies on key, national-level terrorism preparedness guidance and policy documents and on activities, as required by PDDs 39 and 62. The agency also participates in numerous operations and special events designed to enhance the security of domestic events.