Homeland Security Watch

Here is a 10 minute CNN interview with Senator Rand Paul, as he discusses his side of what happened at the Nashville airport on Monday.  Senator Paul says he was detained by TSA because he wanted to walk through the body imaging machine a second  time after the machine apparently showed he had something on his leg.  Senator Paul wanted to lift his pant leg and show there was nothing there.  TSA, apparently, insisted on patting down the United States Senator. Senator Paul declined and was not allowed to travel on that particular flight.

Here is a link to the Transportation Security Administration’s blog telling their side of the story.  One part of that post includes this explanation:

When a passenger or bag alarms in screening technology at a TSA checkpoint, the alarm has to be resolved before the passenger can enter the secure area past the checkpoint.  Passengers who refuse to complete the screening process can’t be granted access to the secure area. TSA notifies law enforcement when this happens, and law enforcement officers can escort them out of the checkpoint.  This isn’t done to punish the passenger– it’s done to ensure that every person who gets on a plane is screened appropriately.

The White House press secretary had this to say about Paul’s claim he was detained:

“Let’s just be clear… the passenger was not detained. The passenger triggered an alarm during routine airport screening, but refused to complete the screening process in order to resolve the issue. Passengers, as in this case, who refuse to comply with security procedures are denied access to the secure gate area. In this case, the passenger was escorted out of the screening area by local law enforcement. It’s my understanding he has now rebooked and passed through security without incident, and that has resolved itself.”

Senator Paul said: he certainly felt like he was detained.

“If you’re told you can’t leave, does that count as detention?” Paul asked. “I tried to leave the cubicle to speak to one of the TSA people and I was barked at: ‘Do not leave the cubicle!’ So, that, to me sounds like I’m being asked not to leave the cubicle. It sounds a little bit like I’m being detained.”

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I heard TSA Administrator Pistole a few weeks ago talking about wanting to move TSA away from looking for dangerous objects and toward looking for dangerous intent.

I think that is a worthwhile objective.

To implement that idea,  Pistole (and yes, it is pronounced “pistol”) noted in a speech last month, TSA has :

… begun implementing additional risk-based security measures at numerous airports [to] expedite the screening process for travelers we know and trust the most, and travelers who are willing to voluntarily share information with us before they travel.

This initiative includes easing access for the military:

U.S. service members are entrusted to protect citizens with their lives and as such, TSA is recognizing that these members pose very little risk to security.

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In the decade TSA has been in business, the agency’s employees have:

screened more than five billion passengers and detected thousands of firearms among countless prohibited items discovered and prevented those weapons from entering the cabin of an aircraft.

I have not seen or read evidence or anecdotes to suggest any – repeat – any of the TSA-screened passengers caught with prohibited items planned to commit a terrorist act.  And that includes Sergeant 1st Class Trey Scott Atwater, the man who reportedly brought C4 explosives with him in his carry on baggage last December.  (Earlier this month, Atwater was released on a 50,000 dollar unsecured bond.)

I do not have access to classified information. Maybe TSA has prevented  or displaced terrorist aviation-related attacks.  I want to grant the agency the benefit of the doubt here.  But I am willing to bet, say, $10,000 none of those possible attacks was perpetrated by a United States Senator.

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People can be — and are — stupid, criminal, sneaky and forgetful when it comes to bringing things onto an aircraft.  (I am not without sin here.)  But at what point do we start actually doing risk-informed, risk-based, risk-whatever decision making with passenger screening?

Unless TSA’s continuously evolving risk-based security model seeks to achieve zero risk, why does it take so long to develop discretionary policies “for travelers we know and trust the most,” for people who a reasonable person would consider not to be a risk?

During Monday’s Republican debate in Florida, Newt Gingrich used the phrase “huge institutional barriers against doing the right thing.”  Is that what’s going on here? Is it congress, the administration, TSA, the airline industry who intends to take another decade to get this worked out?  Who is calling the timing shots here? What is the delay?

I do not ask this to be snarky.  I’d really like to know why a nation-wide trusted flyer program cannot be put into place before the summer arrives.

I would be more than happy to make space available on this blog to help clarify why this is taking so long.

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Some flyers may experience a tinge of Schadenfreude at Senator Paul’s experience. But something is deeply wrong when TSA employees are not given — by law, or policy, or doctrine, or procedure, or whatever —  the discretion to treat a United States Senator with some common sense.

Senator Paul did not have “dangerous intent.”  He was not planning to bring the plane down.

If he wanted to destroy America he has access to a much more powerful device.

 

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Map was developed by Spiegel Online. See a collection of BBC maps of Nigeria examining wealth, health, ethnicity, literacy, and known oil deposits.

 

People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad (Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad), better known by its Hausa name Boko Haram, has claimed responsibility for another set of coordinated attacks in Northern Nigeria occurring late afternoon Friday.

According to Al-Jazeera:

A series of bombings and attacks claimed by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram has left at least 120 dead and many more injured in northern Nigeria’s largest city, witnesses and the Red Cross have said.

“Many agencies are involved in the evacuation of corpses from the streets,” a Nigerian Red Cross spokesman said on Saturday, under condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly, following Friday night’s attacks.

“From our tally, we have 121 so far,” he said.

Other death tolls are higher. Maude Gwadabe, a journalist in Kano, told Al Jazeera by phone that he had seen at least 140 dead bodies.

Gwadabe said the disparity was due to confusion in the aftermath of Friday’s attacks and that victims had been taken to different hospitals, homes and treatment clinics.

“At least 140 people died. The Red Cross and Nigerian emergency services have collected the victims and brought them to one hospital [Murtala Central Hospital], and indeed, hospital officials say 140 people were killed,” Gwadabe said.

In a statement released on Friday, Boko Haram claimed responsibilty for the attacks and said the blasts were revenge for the recent arrests of its members in Kano.

(Note: The death toll reported by Al-Jazeera is much higher than that currently — 10:00AM Eastern — being reported by Reuters or AFP.  As I read reports originating in Nigeria my current assessment is that Al-Jazeera is closer to accurate. NEW: BBC is confirming at least 120 deaths. SUNDAY UPDATE: The Nation (Nigeria) newspaper is reporting 162 fatalities.  LATE SUNDAY: Reuters is reporting “at least 178 deaths.”)

On Thursday — between attacks on Wednesday and yesterday — an op-ed in the Vanguard, a leading Nigerian newspaper, argued:

Now let us take a critical look at the present scenario: Boko Haram is bombing almost everywhere in Nigeria: churches, United Nations Building, Police Headquarters, etc. Members of the sect are Muslims.

None of them is a Christian, and they make audacious statements which no sane individual should utter. Consider some of them: “Western Education is Sin”; “Christians should leave the North within three days else they will be eliminated”; “there will be no respite unless and until Nigeria becomes an Islamic state”, etc.

But as distasteful as the posture of the Boko Haram sect is, it seems not to have occurred to the Southern Christians that there is a grand agenda to extinguish the Southerners from the entity called Nigeria. It has not occurred to them that they should close ranks, forge a common front and fight the mother of all battles for their survival.

On Wednesday, according to the Anglican Church of Nigeria website, the Primate of Nigeria responded to a letter received from the Archbishop of Canterbury:

Primate Okoh stated that all hands are on deck, the National assembly is concerned, the president is having sleepless nights and the Church is already facing serious temptation even though the Church does not initiate hostility. The head of the Anglican Church said the intense attack of Boko Haram is really tempting the Christians whether to continue to maintain peace, always turning the other cheek ,or fight back to find their safety.

He therefore made a passionate appeal to leaders in the country who can reach out to Boko Haram to dissuade them from dastardly acts of killing innocent Christian’s souls, asking them to dialogue with government if they have any axe to grind with her and leave the Church alone.

He said the attempt to drag Nigerians into militancy is something Nigerians must resist.

Roughly 20 million Nigerians are in communion with the Anglican Church, out of a total population of approximately 140 million.   Most demographers indicate that 50 percent of Nigerians are Muslim, 48 percent are Christian.

As outlined previously, the emergence of — or widely-held perception of — an explicit inter-religious war in Nigeria would likely have significant ramifications well beyond Nigeria.

SUNDAY UPDATE:

According to AFP: Gunmen overnight raided a northern Nigerian town with a history of sectarian violence and killed at least nine people, a traditional leader said Sunday.

“We are going round the town checking. So far we have nine people dead and 12 wounded,” Bukata Zhyadi, a traditional ruler of the mainly Christian Sayawa ethnic group, told AFP.

He blamed the attack in Tafawa Balewa in Bauchi state on the Muslim Hausa-Fulani ethnic group.

He said the attackers hurled home-made hand grenades into houses while people were sleeping and shot at those trying to escape.

“Some were shot while trying to escape and some died as a result of the explosives,” he told AFP by phone.

Tafawa Balewa is located along the so-called middle belt between Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.

BREAKING NEWS AS OF 6AM (EASTERN)

According to Reuters: Explosions struck two churches in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi on Sunday, witnesses said, destroying one of them completely, although there were no immediate reports of casualties.

According to Vanguard: Two days after Boko Haram’s coordinated attack in Kano that left over 162 people dead, the radical Islamic sect is currently attacking Bauchi town and its environs. (See map above for location.)

According to reports, explosions were said to have rocked near IBB square, Jahun area and near a railway line in Bauchi township.

A  police station in Tafawa Balewa local government area and another military checkpoint was attacked at Marar Rabar Liman Katagun.   Vanguard cannot ascertain the number of casulties in the attacks.

PLEASE SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL UPDATES AND RELATED INFORMATION

I feel somewhat uncomfortable defending the actions of a group that seemingly brings so much discomfort to so many, but a recent Vanity Fair article on airport security not only regurgitates the obvious and well known, but lacks little strategic point of view.  First, the well-known:

Not only has the actual threat from terror been exaggerated, they say, but the great bulk of the post-9/11 measures to contain it are little more than what Schneier mocks as “security theater”: actions that accomplish nothing but are designed to make the government look like it is on the job. In fact, the continuing expenditure on security may actually have made the United States less safe.

From an airplane-hijacking point of view, Schneier said, al-Qaeda had used up its luck. Passengers on the first three 9/11 flights didn’t resist their captors, because in the past the typical consequence of a plane seizure had been “a week in Havana.” When the people on the fourth hijacked plane learned by cell phone that the previous flights had been turned into airborne bombs, they attacked their attackers. The hijackers were forced to crash Flight 93 into a field. “No big plane will ever be taken that way again, because the passengers will fight back,” Schneier said.

Buried within the article is, in my opinion anyway, a very nice articulation of the problem of looking at the issue of terrorism risk simply by crunching the numbers:

Has the nation simply wasted a trillion dollars protecting itself against terror? Mostly, but perhaps not entirely. “Most of the time we assess risk through gut feelings,” says Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who is also the president of Decision Research, a nonprofit R&D organization. “We’re not robots just looking at the numbers.” Confronted with a risk, people ask questions: Is this a risk that I benefit from taking, as when I get in a car? Is it forced on me by someone else, as when I am exposed to radiation? Are the potential consequences catastrophic? Is the impact immediate and observable, or will I not know the consequences until much later, as with cancer? Such questions, Slovic says, “reflect values that are sometimes left out of the experts’ calculations.”

Security theater, from this perspective, is an attempt to convey a message: “We are doing everything possible to protect you.” When 9/11 shattered the public’s confidence in flying, Slovic says, the handful of anti-terror measures that actually work—hardening the cockpit door, positive baggage matching, more-effective intelligence—would not have addressed the public’s dread, because the measures can’t really be seen. Relying on them would have been the equivalent of saying, “Have confidence in Uncle Sam,” when the problem was the very loss of confidence. So a certain amount of theater made sense. Over time, though, the value of the message changes. At first the policeman in the train station reassures you. Later, the uniform sends a message: train travel is dangerous. “The show gets less effective, and sometimes it becomes counterproductive.”

Eventually, Bruce Schneier overreaches and follows his generally reasonable assertions with analysis that only serves to buttress his own arguments while ignoring a bit of reality:

Terrorists will try to hit the United States again, Schneier says. One has to assume this. Terrorists can so easily switch from target to target and weapon to weapon that focusing on preventing any one type of attack is foolish. Even if the T.S.A. were somehow to make airports impregnable, this would simply divert terrorists to other, less heavily defended targets—shopping malls, movie theaters, churches, stadiums, museums. The terrorist’s goal isn’t to attack an airplane specifically; it’s to sow terror generally. “You spend billions of dollars on the airports and force the terrorists to spend an extra $30 on gas to drive to a hotel or casino and attack it,” Schneier says. “Congratulations!”

This simplifies the issue in ways that are counterproductive.  Two points:

1. Air travel remains an attractive target due to the cost benefit ratio: it takes very little explosive to bring down a plane and kill hundreds, while at the same time creating a spectacular event that instantaneously affects a large industry in the short and long term. The shoe or underwear bombers would have caused relatively little damage at a shopping mall or casino, but could have easily killed hundreds in an instance and caused enormous economic damage if successful on their original mission.  The liquid bombing plot seemed to be aiming for thousands of deaths and a truly strategic impact, one not attainable by the same number of operatives killing themselves in other public spaces (before it is brought up, I do know of the line of reasoning that a wave of attacks against American malls would have a huge impact…but I guess that I have greater faith in citizen resilience in that we as a nation would not hide at home following such an event).

There is a lot of security theater at airports, but much of it began in response to a rash of hijackings decades ago.  When there was no security it was simple to bring a gun or bomb aboard a flight, take it hostage, and gain attention for one’s political demands.  Steps were taken to make this more difficult.  Reasonable steps should be taken now when instead of simply attention the goals include death on a grand scale.

2. Terrorists do not simply “switch from target to target and weapon to weapon.” Groups consider their goals, determine their resources, and plan for what is then attainable.  The IRA was a sophisticated group capable of inflicting a great number of civilian casualties, yet they were restrained by their political goals.  Al Qaeda has different goals and therefore utilizes different methods.  The same will be true of other current and future groups.  If killing hundreds is a goal but resources are limited to a few poorly trained agents, targeting an airliner would seem more attractive than attempting an operation similar to the assault on Mumbai. Terror is a goal when traditional military victory is out of reach, however it should not be thought that all groups and individuals would generalize this goal into a least common denominator and aim for the easiest target.  That is partly what got us into trouble the last time…(Pre-9/11: What?  Worry about a group of actors with no state backing?!?  Preposterous…now about those Chinese….).

Mr. Schneier has performed an invaluable service over the years bringing to light deficiencies in our homeland security thinking, and Mr. Mann (the author of the article in question) accomplishes the same by exposing it to a wider audience.  Yet I can’t help but think that by not considering the issues a few steps beyond shouts of “security theater,” the conversation we should have about homeland security as a nation will not take place.

Monday the independent panel appointed to investigate the Fukushima nuclear accident released a 507 page interim report.  Most of the document focuses on specific operational decisions and tactical choices.

Several specific failures are highlighted: insufficient planning, poor regulation and oversight, inadequate training and exercising, a breakdown in communications within the government and between the government and the operator of the nuclear power plant.

The previous paragraph could be quickly edited to apply to nearly every serious industrial accident: Bhopal, TMI, Deepwater Horizon, various large-scale blackouts and others.   The same failures are referenced in most after-actions for events large and small.

Also typical has been most of the media coverage focusing on personal failures by political, regulatory and corporate leaders.

But toward the end of the report — and the 22 page English-language executive summary — are several atypical bits of analysis worth much more attention than given so far.

It is not easy to admit an absolute safety never exists and to learn to live with risks.  But it is necessary to make effort toward realizing a society where risk information is shared and people are allowed to make reasonable choices.

A quarter century ago I made some extra Yen editing Japanese-to-English translations.  This time I will mostly leave the first draft as it is. There is a kind of clarity in the slightly awkward but more literal rendering.

Even for an accident of low probabilities so long as extremely large scale damages are anticipated once it occurs… due consideration should be given to the risks involved and precautionary measures should be taken.

It was a major shortcoming for the safety of both nuclear power plants and surrounding communities that a nuclear accident had not been assumed to occur as a complex disaster.  Disaster prevention programs should be formulated by assuming complex disasters, which will be the major point in reviewing nuclear power plant safety for the future.

It cannot be denied that the viewpoint of looking at a whole picture of an accident was not adequately reflected in nuclear disaster prevention programs in the past.

The nuclear disaster prevention program had serious shortfalls. It cannot be excused that nuclear accidents could not be managed because of an extraordinary situation that… exceeded the assumption.

The Investigation Committee is convinced of the need of paradigm shift in the basic principles of disaster prevention programs for such a huge system, which may result in serious damage once it has an accident.

Whatever to plan, design and execute, nothing can be done without setting assumptions. At the same time, however, it must be recognized that things beyond assumptions may take place. The accidents this time present us crucial lessons on how we should be prepared for such incidents beyond assumptions.

Low probability, high consequence events deserve our sustained attention.

Reasonable assumptions will be exceeded.

The chairman of the investigation panel, Yotaro Hatamura, has been especially critical of the tendency to blame the crisis on soteigai. This is often translated as “unforseeable events,” but is probably closer to “unimaginable events.”  (Echoes of a “failure of imagination” in the 911 Commission report.)

Hatamura is an engineer.  His best known work is probably Learning from Design Failures in which he examines more than 100 cases to “uncover the root cause, reveal the scenario that led to the unwanted event, describe what happened so readers can clearly repeat the steps in their mind, and propose ways to avoid those mistakes in the future.”   It is a very detailed, case-by-case, engineering oriented approach to disciplined thinking.  He is a solution-oriented guy.

But Hatamura  has also become an advocate for clearly distinguishing between complexity and non-complexity and what can — and, even more important, cannot — be done to manage complexity.  With a little effort we can foresee complex events.  We have a much more difficult time imagining how our strategy for the complex must differ from our strategy for the merely complicated or novel or known.

The Japanese for complexity (see above) includes kanji a classically minded literalist might read as “a surprising recurrence of miscellaneous elephants.”  If you can imagine how you would manage that, you are on your way to being able to manage the cascade of a complex event.

The final report is expected in June.

The new National Preparedness Goal is “a secure and resilient Nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.”

The upgrade given mitigation is arguably the most important policy shift represented in the NPG.   Mitigate now joins Prevent, Protect, Respond, and Recover as “Mission Areas.”  Once the red-headed stepchild of preparedness, mitigate has — at least intellectually — been fully accepted as a strategic priority.

According to the NPG several “core capabilities” are necessary to achieve the mitigation mission area, including:

• Community Resilience
• Long-term Vulnerability Reduction
• Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment
• Threats and Hazard Identification

The details of these capabilities are not — yet — specified.  The forthcoming National Preparedness System is likely to provide much more.  All of these capabilities have significant pedigrees in both research and practice.

There has tended to be an engineering orientation to mitigation.   Fifty-four of 77 examples in the FEMA Mitigation Best Practices Portfolio relate to flooding.  A specific threat is identified, vulnerabilities related to the threat are assessed, risk is reduced usually through some change in the built environment.  You can see this same logic embedded in the capability list.  All of this is helpful and works for earthquakes, wildfires, industrial accidents, and terrorism too.

According to the NPG mitigation is, “The capabilities necessary to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters.”  Unpacking the definition, this suggests that community resilience (see capability list above) contributes to mitigation.

As a strategic principle I would turn this around: mitigation contributes to community resilience.  Resilience and mitigation can be complementary.  But they are also quite distinct. The very best mitigation cannot ensure resilience.  Nor does less-than-full mitigation negate the possibility of significant resilience.   If I had to choose, I would choose resilience over mitigation.

Fortunately, we don’t have to choose.  Attention to both mitigation and resilience is helpful.

The NPG defines resilience as, “The ability to adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to emergencies.”

The use of steel reinforcement to allow buildings to sway with an earthquake is an example of both mitigation and resilience.  The ability of the Internet to allow information-packets to find multiple open channels and opportunistically use whatever is available is another example of resilient design that can mitigate the impact of a threat.

But resilience and especially community resilience is much more than mitigating impact.

Last Thursday I was driving a narrow road through rural Virginia when the radio sounded a tornado warning.  The rain and wind were already strong.  At the first opportunity I pulled off at a convenience store to allow the tornado, about five miles ahead, to finish its run Northeast.

Paying for coffee and a cookie I asked the sales clerk if she had heard the tornado warning.  Glancing at the rain lashing the windows she replied, “Nope.  No radio.  Grew up in Oklahoma thought I’d gotten away from ‘em. ”

I showed her the tornado’s track on my smartphone’s screen.

“Funny thing.  Both my grands (grandparents) had storm cellars, purpose built in the backyard,” she said. “We never did and no basement neither.  Just a ranch house on a slab.  Was like we don’t believe in tornadas no more.”

The storm cellars — my mother’s parents in Oklahoma also had one — are examples of mitigation.   But as the sales clerk observed, before mitigation there was something the authors of the NPG would no doubt call “Threat and Hazard Identification” (this is tornado alley) and “Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment”  (I need a place to be protected from a tornado) which leads to “Long-term Vulnerability Reduction” (I will build a storm cellar).  In other words, our grandparents actively acknowledged a realistic threat.

On May 22 the residents of Joplin, Missouri were alerted to a Tornado Watch at 1:30 PM local time.   A Tornado Warning was br0adcast at 5:09.  Sirens were sounded at 5:11.  The killer tornado touched down southwest of Joplin at 5:34.  According to a study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),  ”The majority of surveyed Joplin residents did not immediately go to shelter upon hearing the initial warning.”  There were 159 deaths and several hundred injuries.

“Was like we don’t believe in tornadas no more.”

I was never in a storm cellar during a storm.  Several times I was in the cellar to retrieve a sack of potatoes or a jar of preserves.  Most storm cellars were also used to store what was harvested from the garden.  Every storm cellar I can remember was dug next to the garden.

You can argue that gardening is also a mitigation measure (against hunger).  But that would squeeze all the joy out of it.  My father’s parents owned grocery stores, but were also gardeners.  I have never had such luscious tomatoes, fresh or canned, since they stopped gardening.

Here’s my hypothesis:  As gardening declined and home refrigeration increased, storm (root) cellars fell into disuse, eventual disrepair, became a hazard themselves, and were filled in. The prospect of tornadoes was not sufficient  to sustain the mitigation activity.  The need for a cool dark place to store vegetables was a crucial indirect motivation for the mitigation.

We never really believed in “tornadas”, but once upon a time we believed in tomatoes (and green beans and peas and potatoes) and retrieving the taste of an August garden deep into February.

Resilience is the outcome of positive behaviors regularly practiced.  Resilience is being aware and appreciative of your environment. Resilience is being enmeshed in a dense network of human relationships.  Resilience is caring for yourself and others.

Resilience is about tomatoes.  Mitigation is about tornadoes.

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For a more technical take on resilience:

Resilience: Five principles of good practice

A Super-cell outbreak is one kind of complex threat: Do the principles of good practice apply?

Principles of good practice for advancing resilience: Awareness of complex context and connections

The national preparedness goal (NPG) says the nation is successfully prepared when we have a

“secure and resilient nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to and recover from threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.”

I was with several dozen people last week who think the language is entirely too bureaucratic. Maybe it is.  But of all the homeland security preparedness goals published during homeland security’s first decade, the current one is my favorite.

I like the “whole community” language.

Homeland security is now officially more than the Department of Homeland Security. The goal acknowledges that.

I also like the emphasis on “threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.”

It’s not your grandfather’s homeland security anymore. Homeland security is focusing on the greatest risks, not just terrorism and natural hazards.

What are those greatest risks?

When Admiral Mike Mullen was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff — a job he left earlier this week — he many times said the national debt is the biggest threat to our national security. But the new chief doesn’t  “agree exactly with that.”

I know threat is not the same thing as risk, but as a nation we can do better than having dueling threat assessments. The NPG recognizes that:

“All leveles of government and the whole community should present and assess risk in a similar manner to provide a common understanding of the threats and hazards confronting our nation.”

That makes sense to me (except for the “present” part, whatever that means). I would like to know what threats and hazards pose the greatest risk, especially considering the NPG observation that “understanding the greatest risks to the nation’s security and resilience is a critical step” in being prepared.

I want to be prepared. So bring on the threats and hazards information.

“In accordance with PPD-8, and in coordination with Federal departments and agencies, a Strategic National Risk Assessment was conducted.”

However, an informative NPG  footnote says:

The complete results of the Strategic National Risk Assessment are classified. For an unclassified summary, see http://www.fema.gov/ppd 8.

I could not find anything at that location called an Unclassified Summary of the Strategic National Risk Assessment.

But I did find:

National Preparedness is aimed at strengthening the security and resilience of the Nation by preparing for the full range of 21st century risks that threaten national security, including weapons of mass destruction, cyber attacks, terrorism, pandemics, transnational threats and catastrophic natural disasters.

The “full range of 21st century risks” seem a lot like 20th century risks. But perhaps the real risk assessment — the one that apparently cannot be shared with the “whole community” — is much rangier.

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Meanwhile, Wall Street is being occupied by people exercising their first ammendment right “peaceably to assemble.”

And, according to a Wall Street Journal article titled “Wall Street Protest Digs In, Spreads”, and other reports, people in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and elsewhere inside and outside the United States are also peaceably assembling.

There’s a website called Occupy Together that seems to be keeping track of where these activities are taking place.

Another website, Occupy Wall Street, offers one perspective of what this “organic movement” (as the Wall Street Journal calls it) is about:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. We are using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

Let’s see,  Arab Spring: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Israel, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Western Sahara.

Unemployed people with cell phones, twitter accounts, facebook pages, youtube feeds.

Now there’s a 21st century risk.

I wonder if it is included in the Strategic National Risk Assessment.

 

Probability map for a >5.0 earthquake within 50 km of Washington DC

In June a colleague used a US Geological Survey Earthquake probability tool to explore the likelihood of a  5.0 or stronger quake  occurring within 50 km of Washington D.C.   Maybe once in 5000 years is what he decided.

How time flies.

Of course, that’s not exactly how probability works.   But however you treat it, Tuesday’s 5.8 tremor was a rare event along the east coast. Statistically it was “improbable.”

When speaking of events that have the potential to seriously disrupt society and  kill lots of people, we should stop using the word “improbable.”  Somehow in ordinary English improbable implies “safe to ignore.”

There are some eventualities of which we can be certain, but are beyond our ability to situate in time and space.   We can confidently anticipate these events, but precise prediction is beyond our current capability… and potentially impossible.

We can anticipate the general characteristics of Hurricane Irene.  We cannot be sure if she will visit Times Square, Montauk, or the Delaware Water Gap.  We have a better sense of when rather than where she will arrive.  Wherever she washes up, Irene will be an unwelcome guest.

Hurricanes entering New York harbor are infrequent.  Earthquakes strong enough to crack the capitol dome are infrequent.  Major dam failures are infrequent.  Terrorist attacks are infrequent.  Will they happen?  Almost certainly.

Somehow, I am much more likely to give some sustained attention to that which I know is infrequent,  than to what I perceive is improbable.

A  firefighter, a  cop, and an emergency manager walk into a bar.  This is not a joke.  I was with the three of them.

One had red wine, another had a beer, the third ordered scotch.   I was drinking Dry Sack on the rocks with a twist.

Can you guess which one had which drink?  Can you guess which offered what to the conversation:

“The problem is everyone is in denial about the worst risks.”

“New Orleans after Katrina was simple compared to Sendai after the tsunami.  How about Memphis after New Madrid or LA after the big one?” You can know the real pros by whether or not they pronounce it Maaadrid, as in really crazy.

“How about DC, Pittsburgh, and Birmingham after New Madrid?  How about pipelines, rail bridges, interstates, and the Eastern Interconnect after New Madrid?”  Hows about every little town downstream from a dam?

“How about the whole economy for the next ten years after Long Beach is taken out? I don’t care if it’s tsunami, pandemic, or an IND.”

“How about the whole economy if some cyber-anarchists decide to really screw with credit cards and ATMs?”

“As long as they vaporize my mortgage too.”

The bar talk was not as grim as this suggests.  Extended conversations with this crew are like a public reading of Dante’s Inferno (no Paradiso) with a running commentary by the comedian Lewis Black.  You roar with laughter over a comment that ought not be documented here.   A slightly sick sense of humor is essential to survival in these professions.

“We’re the real problem,” one guy said wrapping his arms around the shoulders of those on either side.  ”We’re too good.  Why worry when the A team’s got your back?”

“Just call 911 and the cavalry always comes.”

“Even under fire… hell, with radioactive brimstone falling from the sky.”

“Thing is, we’re really good at the everyday stuff and lots of the tough stuff.”

“Did you hear about the 911 call because the citizen thought her remote had been stolen.  Cops found it in a drawer.  They responded!”

“That’s the problem, we are so #$!@ responsive we’ve trained the citizens to depend on us.  When the big #$!@ happens they just wait around.”

“Not everyone.”

“Practically EVERYONE!”

“There’s two big pile-ups:  real increasing dependence. Who grows their own food anymore?  Who even eats at home? And where does our food come from? Not anywhere close.  Second pile-up: The #$!@ complicated system works really, really well until it doesn’t work at all.  So there’s no obvious reason to pay much attention, until it’s too late.”

“So… what we’re really good at is hiding the problems?”

“Sure.  There’s a fire.  You put it out.  You get ‘em temporary housing or they go to the in-laws.  I keep gawkers away.  Everything’s fine. No worries. But in Joplin or Tuscaloosa? Even those huge twisters were tiny compared to what we’ll get when the wrong fault shifts under 5 million or a wildfire overwhelms San Diego.  Hows about a CAT 5 and flood surge pounding Miami-Dade?”

“When they call 911 no one will answer, they won’t even get a #$!@ dial-tone!”

“It doesn’t take such a big hit.  Maybe catastrophe comes on little cat feet?  You read Ted Lewis’ new book?  The complex systems we depend on are so intricate  just one little complication and the consequences cascade.”

“Sort of like the 2003 blackout caused by tree branches in Ohio?”

“But the cause wasn’t tree branches, it’s the way WE build and manage systems. Tree branches are a preexisting condition.  Our choices create the vulnerabilities.”

“You know when I was a little kid,” (the guy to his right mimicked the Staten Island accent) we had a farm right down the road.  It’s a landfill now.  The big farms in Jersey, they’re all McMansions.  Mom and pop get their broccoli and peas from California just like all of us.”

“You know what though? The beers alot better than back then.  Hey waitress, another round here.”

Ten years of Al Qaeda-focused concern about terrorism may have faded the memory of a group that in the 1990s had significant programs aimed at developing biological and chemical weapons and successfully used Sarin nerve gas in an attack on the Tokyo subway, killing 13 and injuring thousands. Reminding us of those efforts and seeking to cull insights from their work, The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has released a report, “Aum Shinrikyo: Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons.” According to their website, this report

“culminates a multi-year project led by Richard Danzig, former Secretary of the Navy and Chairman of the CNAS Board of Directors; with Marc Sageman, Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army on the Insider Threat; Terrance Leighton, Senior Staff Scientist at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and Chief Scientist at Science Applications International Corporation; Lloyd Hough, Senior Research Scientist at Battelle in International Technology Assessments; Zachary Hosford, Research Associate at CNAS; and two Japanese colleagues investigating these issues.  Through personal interviews and correspondence with former members of Aum Shinrikyo’s leadership, the report provides never-before documented information on the terrorist group and its operations.”

It is an interesting document that provides a great deal of detail about the cult’s evolution, members, and technical background on their efforts to produce and deploy biological and chemical weapons.  From this narrative the authors have pulled out ten points that they feel can be useful in understanding future terrorist groups who may attempt to go down a similar path.  Here are the points, though I would strongly recommend reading the report itself for explanation and in-depth analysis of each observation:

1. Aum’s biological program was a failure, while its chemical program was even more capable than would have been evident from its successful release of sarin in the Tokyo subway system in 1995.

2. Effectively disseminating biological and chemical agents was challenging for Aum.

3. Accidents recurred in Aum’s chemical and biological programs but did not deter pursuit of these weapons.

4. When Aum’s top members transitioned to using violence, they readily brought other leaders down this path and effectively persuaded, isolated or killed dissidents.

5. Though police pursuit of Aum was remarkably lax, even intermittent or anticipated enforcement actions highly disrupted the cult’s efforts to develop chemical and biological weapons.

6. The key work on Aum’s biological and chemical programs was conducted largely by the leadership group.

7. Aum’s hierarchical structure facilitated initiating and resourcing biological and chemical programs.

8. Even a retrospective assessment of biological and chemical weapons programs like this one is difficult and burdened with gaps and uncertainties.

9. Aum displayed impressive persistence and produced successes despite its commitment to many bizarre ideas, its misallocation of resources and its numerous operational failures.

10. Significant failures preceded or accompanied Aum successes.

Guns and bombs will continue to be the most likely weapon utilized by terrorists, and as Anders Breivik demonstrated, they can be horrendously destructive.  Yet it has been more than 15 years since Aum used Sarin in the Tokyo subway and technological trends are not moving in a direction that will make it more difficult for future groups to attempt something similar.  A balanced counter-terrorism approach is necessary to prevent the most likely types of attacks while not closing our eyes to the possible, if more remote, threats.

Or as the authors put it:

“Groups such as Aum expose us to risks uncomfortably analogous to playing Russian roulette. Many chambers in the gun prove to be harmless, but some chambers are loaded. The blank chambers belie the destructive power that the gun can produce when held to the head of a society.”

 

Andrew Bacevich described (in this video) what happened when the United States lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949, and faced the possibility it would be completely destroyed by the Soviet Union:

“Policymakers reacted in panic….  [This] possibility came to be seen as something that was intolerable.  And from that time down to the present … there has been a theme in US national policy that posits absolute security as the minimum adequate security.”

———————

The woman in the picture is 95 years old.  She weighs about 100 pounds.  She uses a wheelchair because she has difficulty standing.

According to a story in the Northwest Florida Daily News, written by Lauren Sage Reinlie, the woman was detained, searched, and asked to remove her soiled adult diaper.  The TSA screener had to complete the pat down search before the woman would be permitted “to fly to Michigan to be with family members during the final stages of her battle with leukemia.”

The familiar and predictable outrage the incident generated was balanced by the familiar and predictable response from TSA:

The TSA works with passengers to resolve any security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner….

During any part of the process, if there is an alarm, then we have to resolve that alarm….

[T]he procedures are the same for everyone to ensure national security.

TSA cannot exempt any group from screening because we know from intelligence that there are terrorists out there that would then exploit that vulnerability….

While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner.

We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure.

The woman’s daughter thought about the official response:

“[If] you’re just following rules and regulations, then the rules and regulations need to be changed….  I’m not one to make waves, but dadgummit, this is wrong. People need to know. Next time it could be you.”

———————

I think Bacevich’s observation is important.  Absolute security ought not be the minimum level of adequate security.

The woman’s observation is also important, “Dadgummit, this is wrong.”

Congress and TSA know this.

As Kelley Vlahos’ article in the June issue of Homeland Security Today summarizes, the future of airport security screening is supposed to be a shift from “no one is exempt” to an approach driven more by intelligence and risk.

Congressman Mike Rogers agrees with this vision.  But — like some DHS leaders and many fliers — Rogers is impatient:

I don’t think [TSA has] to explain to people that it’s potentially dangerous to fly … with terrorists continuing to target Americans, but we have to be reasonable in our efforts.  When American’s see intrusive practices that don’t seem to be intelligence-driven or smart, it drives them nuts….  I think [TSA] wants to get there, but we need to do it tomorrow and not three years from now.”

Absolute security takes a very long time to achieve.  Adequate security may take even longer.

This week two more steps were taken to assess the cause of the cascade of consequences in the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake-and-tsunami. Both signal some interesting strategic assessments.

Tuesday the Japanese cabinet put in place an expert panel to review the Fukushima nuclear emergency. It will be chaired by Yotaro Hatamura an expert in failure.   In an interview with Reuters, Kenji Iino a colleague of Hatamura offered,

“While final conclusions must wait for the probe, it appeared the utility’s first fatal error was its failure to take steps to prevent an accident whose risk of occurring was low but whose consequences were huge.”

The utility, known as Tepco, has said that the deadly combination of a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting massive tsunami was “soteigai” — beyond expectations.

But a review of company and regulatory records by Reuters showed Japan’s government and the utility repeatedly played down the danger and ignored warnings.

“The probability was small and I think they didn’t properly calculate how big the damage would be if it happened,” Iino said.

Hatamura’s investigation will look not only at the causes of the accident but the response by Tokyo Electric and the government, both of which have been accused of bungling their handling of a disaster which nearly three months on poses a continued threat to the environment and health.

An inability to think outside the box when the unexpected strikes can make things worse, Iino said.

“If there is someone on the ground who can make the right judgment, that’s fine. The problem is when there is no one who can make that call,” he said.

“People’s jobs have become narrower and more fragmented and there are fewer who understand the big picture.”

An entirely separate United Nations study has apparently drawn some similar conclusions. According to the Kyodo news agency, drawing heavily on a United Nations report released this week:

The March 11 killer tsunami that hit the Tohoku coast following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdowns revealed the fragility of Japan’s infrastructure, according to a recent U.N. report on natural disasters.

The report describes Japan as a country whose infrastructure collapsed in a way more closely associated with less-developed countries and from which lessons can be drawn.

“The earthquake, its aftershocks, the tsunami and the nuclear emergency illustrate what a synchronous failure looks like: a multisectoral system’s collapse,” says the 2011 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.

It also describes how the disaster disrupted “critical sections” of Japan’s power grid, including the power supply needed to cool the spent fuel at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, and how backup systems were disabled, thereby resulting in the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

“The full consequence of the trauma and costs will not be known for years to come,” the report says. “However, in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, it became evident that even in this highly sophisticated and well-prepared society, the impact of physical hazards on infrastructure can quickly lead to outcomes normally associated with poorer countries: large-scale food and water shortages, shelter crises and logistical collapse.”

The 2011 floods in Australia, the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year and Japan’s latest disaster serve as a “reminder that developed countries are also very exposed,” the report says.

The March 11 disaster additionally highlighted that there are “emerging risks and new vulnerabilities associated with the complexity and interdependency of the technological systems on which modern societies depend,” it says. MORE

About two weeks ago I was talking to a long-time professional with an extensive network of emergency management contacts across the United States.  ”Japan is already old news, nearly forgotten,” he said shaking his head.  ”We will not learn from their failures.  Unless we experience the pain ourselves, we never pay attention.”

Watching coverage of the devastation wrought by the EF5 tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri over the weekend, I have been pondering the theme of the Washington State Emergency Management Association’s conference scheduled for later this year: “Preparedness: It’s Not a Mystery.” As catchy as that may sound, I find it hard to accept.

Gregory Treverton’s famous distinction — first made in the context of national security but certainly applicable here — warns us that things we do not know are very different from things that are contradictory, confusing or complex.

For most of us, weather remains one of the most enduring if not profound mysteries affecting the course of our daily lives. The uncertainty surrounding the occurrence of severe weather — will it rain today or not? — pales in comparison to the mysteries surrounding the capricious nature of the forces unleashed upon us when it strikes in with the suddenness and severity of a tornado.

The heartbreaking images and stories of personal loss strike a particular chord with me as a survivor of the F5 tornado that struck Xenia, Ohio on April 3, 1974, as part of a super-outbreak that spanwed 148 twisters across the country’s mid-section. Like a similar outbreak last month in Alabama, the Xenia tornado was huge and stayed on the ground for a very long time. Thirty-two people died as a direct result of the storm, and two National Guard soldiers were killed a couple of days later when fire swept through a downtown furniture store in which they were billeted.

As painful as the loss of life was for those who knew someone killed by the twister, the scope and scale of the devastation left many of us bewildered. So many landmarks were swept away that many had difficulty even figuring out where they were despite having grown up in the town. The loss of schools, homes, businesses and so many historic structures simply obliterated by the storm had a profound and lasting impact on the town. Xenia, like Joplin, has a long and proud history that changed forever in just a few minutes.

Nothing we say or do can really prepare us for the devastation that such disasters bring. Despite efforts to develop better building standards, we still cannot build economical structures for routine human habitation that will resist the effects of catastrophic storms like those that struck Xenia and Joplin. Even if we could, that would not make it any easier for those left to pick up the pieces of these shattered communities to make their way back to a sense of normalcy.

At best, preparedness helps people provide themselves, their loved ones and neighbors with the necessities of life for a short time following such an extreme event. Those who make a big deal about preparing for events like the Xenia and Joplin tornadoes often have little or no first-hand experience of such devastation themselves. As such, their exhortations strike even my sympathetic and trained ears as preachy and moralistic.

Any objective assessment of the situation in Joplin today, like that of Xenia almost 40 years ago, makes it clear that the survivors do a pretty admirable job of looking after one another despite their so-called lack of preparedness. What people lack in preparedness, they often more than make up for in empathy and resourcefulness.

If we want the public to take us seriously, we would be much better off telling it like it really is: “We can neither prepare for nor adequately protect against events like the Xenia and Joplin tornadoes or the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown that struck Japan or other similar events. What we can do is help you understand the sorts of challenges that will face us as a community when these events strike.”

With any luck, such honesty will motivate people to do something that will make a difference: Worry less about the uncertainties and do more to resolve the ambiguities associated with disaster risk, such as figuring out what systems will fail and why. A clear-eyed assessment of these risks just might encourage people to invest in the institutions, develop the dispositions and reinforce the relationships that will allow them to respond with resilience when disaster strikes rather than relying on the planners and preachers who spend so much of their time extolling the virtues of preparedness that they have neither the time nor the inclination to come to the rescue.

When it comes to the capriciousness of catastrophic disasters like the Joplin tornado, rescue doesn’t really start until the recovery phase. The skills and sensibilities emergency managers need for this work emphasize asking the right questions not supplying prepackaged answers. Inevitably, the communities that come back better have taken the time to get the questions right before they start implementing the answers. And it’s never too early to start asking these questions since every community that has been through a disaster before is already in line for another one. [Last paragraph added by author at 0710 hours PDT, May 25, 2011.]

The Political Economy of Homeland Security

The week before U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden, at least one prominent media outlet took note of an academic paper examining the return on America’s homeland security investments. Although politicians have offered varying opinions in the week since bin Laden’s killing about the ongoing need for such investments, the paper itself has received little additional notice. An event like bin Laden’s death should, however, amplify rather than reduce our interest in assessing where we stand and where we are heading.

The study’s authors, John Mueller of The Ohio State University and Mark G. Stewart of the University of Newcastle, argue that the country’s one trillion dollar investment in homeland security since the 9/11 attacks should be assessed on the basis of risk reduction and cost-benefit returns. Using such techniques, they argue, one would be hard-pressed to justify the massive scope and scale of investments given the miniscule returns achieved.

I am not sure this finding surprises many people reading this blog. Moreover, I am reasonably confident that a at least some of you question whether it even matters.

The homeland security enterprise, like national defense, has rarely considered cost-benefit returns significant criteria for making decisions. To the extent that analysts consider risk reduction, they accept the extremely low short-term probabilities of an attack while assuming something catastrophic (by some measure or another) will occur eventually.

This ensures that debates usually focus on whether or not we are thinking about the right rare event, rather than whether or not our efforts will actually make any difference at all. The opportunity costs of the investments rarely receive any significant attention.

Even if we cannot justify making all homeland security and national defense decisions on the basis of risk-cost-benefit analyses, we should be able to agree that securing should short-term yield from our investments makes sense even if  long-term benefits remain our ultimate concern. Too often, though, the short-term benefit is measured solely in terms of the immediate satisfaction of having mollified critics or addressing the exigencies of whatever crises called our past decisions into question.

As a community concerned with how we prepare future practitioners, these tendencies to focus too much on the moment on one hand and too far into the future on the other should concern us. Most of the techniques we teach new practitioners have very limited efficacy in these situations or have very little evidence to recommend them.

Allied disciplines, like political science, public administration, engineering, economics and policy analysis, employ more robust theoretical frameworks in their analyses. Although homeland security practitioners recognize many if not most of these methods, it seems we rarely use them. Why is this?

As we look to the post-bin Laden future, I suspect we would do well to recognize that most of the investments we made had little impact on the ultimate success of the mission to locate and eliminate the world’s most-wanted terrorist. As we look for ways to address the atomized residue of al Qaeda and its affiliates, we would do well to ask ourselves which investments make the most sense.

We can invest in the development of democratic institutions and the popular expression of the principles of democratic self-governance, including respect for human rights and economic and environmental equity. Or we can continue supporting the status quo ante, which equates stability with subsidies to military-industrial oligarchs and their patrons.

Applying cost-benefit analysis does not in or of itself ensure democratic outcomes. But the absence of any consideration of the economic value of investments in homeland security like anything else ensures that those who have the most to gain enjoy more say in the decision than those who have something to lose.

Building a sustainable homeland security future may not mean ensuring stability in the short-term, especially if it comes at the expense of our economic security. Investing our national wealth — especially our human and social capital — in institutions that promote freedom will generate a more stable long-term future only if we are willing to accept that speed and certainty matter a whole lot less than the price we pay in terms of blood and treasure.

Tuesday’s New York Times had a piece entitled Radiation is Everywhere, But How to Rate Harm? It is one of the best, brief summaries of radiation risk that I have read.

The level of fear in response to Fukushima has surprised me.  The nature of this fear strikes me as very difficult to mitigate.

If I was a wanna-be terrorist the level of concern demonstrated recently would certainly motivate renewed attention to use of a Radiological Dispersal Device.  Evidently even a very small risk will be significantly amplified in the media and public imagination.  That is the kind of return-on-investment on which the terrorist typically depends.

In any case, if you missed the original piece in the Tuesday Times, please check out online.

 

Two days ago, Homeland Security Watch’s own Chris Bellavita pointed out in an email that “baseball season starts tomorrow and to me that means the homeland is safe.”  As a baseball fan whose pulse quickens at the phrase “pitchers and catchers report,” all I could think was: amen.

Whatever the correct analogy–I need an extended spring training; I belong in the pundit minor leagues; I am simply a replacement-level commentator–I realize that I am simply not in the George Will-class of baseball loving opinionators.  That said, I still cannot resist attempting to make another connection between baseball and homeland security.

The baseball season is long, so there will be ample time to tease out general connections between what is required to win on the diamond as well as succeed in this amorphous thing we call homeland security. However, one aspect of the game struck me as particularly timely in terms of news out of Japan–the importance of having a “Plan B.”

In baseball, one can hope that a team’s starting players will go the entire season without losing much time to injury.  This happens, albeit rarely, and when it does the team involved (assuming the players were good in the first place) does well.  Most often, this just doesn’t happen and a good team has a smart general manager who considers this possibility before the season begins and takes steps to mitigate the risk.

It would seem obvious that baseball teams would plan for contingencies involving losing a couple starting players for a period of time.  Yet it involves variables not easily managed, as the most useful bench players when regulars are healthy are not always the optimal choices to fill-in for a starter over the long term, as well as juggling competing priorities at the minor league level (i.e. whether to develop prospects or stock back ups). It is easy to plan for the best case and hard to manage risks involved with the worst:

Assembling a 25-man roster is fairly easy for most general managers, especially for a team with financial resources.But finding the depth to combat injuries requires creativity.

“You have to plan for injuries because they happen every year,’’ said Epstein. “You try and plan for the worst-case scenario and adjust to the best-case scenario. It’s by trying to create redundancy.

Some obvious lessons for homeland security planning in general.  Yet, just as in baseball, this balance between best and worst case scenario planning can be difficult in even the best prepared of countries–or simply ignored.

Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s disaster plans greatly underestimated the scope of a potential accident at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, calling for only one stretcher, one satellite phone and 50 protective suits in case of emergencies.

Hard to believe, but it seems that in a nation often lauded as among the best, if not the best, in terms of preparation for a natural disaster simply dropped the ball regarding catastrophic planning for nuclear facilities. More from the Wall Street Journal article describing the lack of proper planning:

Disaster-response documents for Fukushima Daiichi, examined by The Wall Street Journal, also contain few guidelines for obtaining outside help, providing insight into why Japan struggled to cope with a nuclear crisis after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the facility.

There are no references to Tokyo firefighters, Japanese military forces or U.S. equipment.

The main disaster-readiness manual, updated annually, envisions the fax machine as a principal means of communication with the outside world and includes detailed forms for Tepco managers when faxing government officials.

Much hinged on the fax machine. One section directs managers to notify the industry minister, the local governor and mayors of nearby towns of any problems “all at once, within 15 minutes, by facsimile.” In certain cases, the managers were advised to follow up by phone to make sure the fax had arrived.

Obviously one could take up several blog posts to simply unpack these and other related revelations. Undoubtedly, other Japanese efforts at disaster readiness saved thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lives following the earthquake and tsunami.  I have serious doubts about the current ability of the United States to manage a similar size catastrophe–both the immediate impact and long term consequences.  And I agree with Phil that the nuclear crisis is needlessly overshadowing the larger natural disaster.

Yet it still boggles the mind that a society so prepared could allow such a substandard state of planning to exist.  The current disaster would not have been avoided if much of the response plan had been improved–only moving the back-up generators to higher ground would have saved the plant from the loss of power that initially drove events.  However, this disaster did underline the deficiencies in planning and hints at the difficulties that it caused in responding to this maximum of maximums event.

What the managers of the Fukushima plant failed to do was honestly consider even a bad, never mind worst, case scenario.  The level of planning appears to be equivalent to losing your back-up catcher or utility infielder for half the season.  Would it be inconvenient?  Absolutely.  Would it derail a season?  Not a chance.  Perhaps planning for an earthquake and resulting tsunami stronger than the reliable historical record indicates would not have been feasible before current events.  But the existence of a decent Plan B may have helped ameliorate the consequences of this Godzilla-esq black swan that fell on the people of Japan.

Carl Sagan’s words about science echoed today as I tried unsuccessfully to think about what is going on in Japan.

“We have … arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

If what happened in Japan were a table top exercise, no one would allow the scenario to be used.

“OK, first we’ll do a huge earthquake; bigger than anyone has ever seen before.”

“Right. Then comes the tsunami.”

“Excellent, and we make sure the waves also hit another continent.

“Perfect. And the earthquake is so massive it knocks the earth off its axis.”

“What?”

“Right. That’s too much. How about this. We blow up a nuclear power plant.

“Outstanding. Make it three power plants and maybe we really have something.”

—————

Quotes from one of the hundreds of news reports:

“People are suppressing hunger with instant noodles or rice balls.”

“Not much was left when search-and-rescue teams finally reached Natori on Monday. There was searching, but not much rescuing. There was, essentially, nobody left to rescue.”

“People are surviving on little food and water. Things are simply not coming.”

“We have repeatedly asked the government to help us, but the government is overwhelmed by the scale of the damage and the enormous demand for food and water.”

“We are getting around just 10 percent of what we have requested.”

“We have requested funeral homes across the nation to send us many body bags and coffins. But we simply don’t have enough.”

“We just did not expect such a thing to happen. It’s just overwhelming.”

“We are patient because everyone in the quake hit areas are suffering.”

“I’m giving up hope.”

“I never imagined we would be in such a situation.”

“I had a good life before. Now we have nothing. No gas, no electricity, no water.”

“All my other relatives are dead. Washed away.”

—————

I was on the US east coast when the earthquake hit. I heard that by 11 AM eastern time, the US west coast would get hit by waves that traveled 500 miles an hour. I live about an hour from the Pacific Ocean. My family will be ok.

But still. How could that be?

Then Sagan’s voice again: “… almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.”

—————

More quotes from news reports:

“…radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months…. More steam releases also mean the plume headed across the Pacific could continue to grow. The White House sought to tamp down concerns, saying modeling done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had concluded “Hawaii, Alaska, the US territories and the US West Coast are not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

I am never comforted by passive voice sentences. But it’s the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). They ought to understand this stuff. I certainly don’t.

So I went to the NRC’s website, because people who read blogs go to websites to learn things.

The site is http://www.nrc.gov/. The home page had a picture of 3 men in ties and one woman staring at paper on a desk. Maybe its a stock photo. The caption under the photo says:

“The NRC has been monitoring the Japanese reactor events via its Headquarters Operations Center in Rockville, Md., on a 24-hour-a-day basis. MORE”

Click on MORE and you download a one page press release that says toward the end:

“The NRC will not comment on hour-to-hour developments at the Japanese reactors. This is an ongoing crisis for the Japanese who have primary responsibility.”

Good policy decision. For 1955 maybe.

But I want to give the NRC the benefit of the doubt. I’m sure they are busy.

They do offer a link to their “Emergency Preparedness and Response” page:

The vapidity of the prose on that page makes me long for ready.gov (whose main page provides links to information about tsunamis, flooding and the 2011 national level exercise).

I’ll look at that later. Right now I want to know more about how the west coast is “not expected to experience any harmful levels of radioactivity.”

—————

I know water traveled from Japan to Oregon at 500 miles an hour. I know weather travels from west to east. I know something called “radioactive steam” is being released and may continue to be released “for weeks or even months.” I also know first reports are frequently wrong. But I want to do my part as a prepared citizen.

What if the modeling and the passive voice sentences are wrong?

What if some crap in the atmosphere modified by the word “radioactive” makes its way across the Pacific?

I know with almost moral certainty that’s not likely to happen. Just as I know with almost moral certainty terrorists will not attack the elementary school a mile from my house. And the creek in my backyard is not going to flood and sweep my house away. One — a person, a community, a nation — accepts certain low probability, high consequence risks.

“We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces,” Carl Sagan tells me.

—————

The NRC’s “Emergency Preparedness and Response” page seems to be mostly information for people who live near nuclear power plants.

In 2011, does living on the same planet as Japan mean I now live near a nuclear power plant?

No, says the NRC.

I have to be within a 10 mile radius before the page will speak to my concerns.

—————

I do a little more reading on the NRC page and see something about potassium iodide.

You can learn about obtaining potassium iodine, which reduces the absorption of radioactive iodide, by contacting your State or local government’s emergency organization (see FEMA’s State Offices and Agencies of Emergency Management ). Potassium iodide can also be purchased from local pharmacies. You can learn more about the Use of Potassium Iodide on NRC website.

“Reduces the absorption of radioactive iodide.” OK. That’s got to be a good thing.

So I follow that link and read:

If taken properly, potassium iodide (KI) will help reduce the dose of radiation to the thyroid gland from radioactive iodines, and reduce the risk of thyroid cancer. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued guidance on the dosage and effectiveness of potassium iodide.

The NRC provides this link to a PDF document on the FDA website.

Click on that link and this is what you see:

Page Not Found

Our apologies. The link or location you used does not exist or was moved.

Clicking on the other NRC links does not immediately provide any more useful information — whether from federal resources or from my state.

I know as this “event” continues to evolve, the national knowledge construction machine will triangulate a coherent story about any radiation threat and what to do — if anything — about it.

But I want to do something now.  See something, do something.

—————

I’m not panicking. But I am being ignorant — in (I hope) a good way. I lack knowledge about the potential effects of radioactive stuff mixing with the Oregon rain and falling on my children.

Probably never going to happen. Not in a million years. But still, I do like to be prepared. Just in case.

One of the mantras from my special event days came back to me: “It’s better to have something and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

I’ve done enough research for today. Time to get some potassium iodide.

—————

I know I’m never going to need it, but the NRC site did say “Potassium iodide can also be purchased from local pharmacies.”

I went to the health food store first. Then one pharmacy. Then another. Then a third.

All out.

Seems there may have been a small run on potassium iodide.

“We have more coming in tomorrow,” one guy told me. “I’ll call you when we get it in.”

A pharmacist at a national chain store stuttered when I asked.

“People have been asking about that. It must be for that…. that thing”

She couldn’t think of the word. Or maybe she didn’t want to say it. I didn’t say anything either.

Then — like the first time you go through a back scatter device at a TSA checkpoint — I surrendered.

“That ‘radiation’ thing?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “That radiation thing. We don’t carry it. You want me to call the store manager?”

“No thanks,” I said, wondering why she asked me that.

I checked its availability on Amazon.

Crooks! Gouging!” shouted one (somewhat factually inaccurate) reviewer published on Monday. “This is OBSCENE! These pills go for 5 dollars per pack. Even l0 would be too much. Just this morning they jacked it from 9 to 49 and 10 minutes later… jacked it up to l00 dollars. They jacked it up twice in less than an hour.”

Interesting.  An internet panic?

Am I contributing to prudent preparedness or ignorant panic?

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Since last autumn, FEMA has been talking about changing planning assumptions from whatever they are now (I think all hazards) to something called “whole community” and “maximum of maximums.” For an example, see http://blog.fema.gov/2010/12/70-earthquake-in-midwest-planning-for.html

The slightly Freudian acronym for “maximum of maximum” is MOM. Perhaps MOM was meant to be somewhat comforting. Or disturbing.  Or confusing.

The National Level Exercise in May will use a maximum of maximum assumption to simulate a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault.

FEMA’s whole community strategy “is built upon a foundation of a meta-scenario consisting of the maximum of maximum challenges across a range of scenarios.”

Maximum of maximums (or maximax) is also a decision science term, referring to a “strategy … that prefers the alternative with the chance of the best possible outcome, even if its expected outcome and its worst possible outcome are worse than other alternatives.”

That definition takes a bit of unpacking before meaning emerges.

FEMA is less abstract about MOM. They are talking about an event that

- Affects about 7 million people

- Covers 25,000 square miles

- Affects several states and FEMA regions

- 190,000 fatalities in initial hours

- 265,000 citizens require emergency medical attention

- Severe damage to critical infrastructure

- Severe damage to essential transportation infrastructure

- Ingress/egress options limited.

—————

I went to a conference last week where FEMA leaders talked about their new strategy. I think they are waiting for President Obama to sign a new national preparedness directive before they make a really big deal about this change.

There were a few dozen experienced emergency management and homeland security professionals in the room when the FEMA representatives talked about “whole community” and “maximum of maximum.”

My sense was some people did not understand it. Some people understood it and liked it. Other people understood it but were concerned that now states and cities would have to change their planning assumptions (again).

I’m not sure I understood all of it. But today, FEMA’s definition of MOM does not go far enough for me.

It says nothing about the earth moving off its axis.