Chertoff: Planning for disaster requires everyone
We are, as the president directed last fall, well underway in the process of reviewing the emergency planning in all 50 states and the 75 leading urban areas to make sure that their evacuation and other emergency plans are up to date, that we've identified gaps in capability, and that we are working with our state and local partners to remedy those gaps. We got an initial report on February 10th, which was the deadline for stage one. It was a self-assessment, and frankly, it was a mixed assessment. Even people assessing themselves gave themselves some high marks and some not so high marks. We've now gone back and we are validating that assessment; we're looking at what has already been done. We're kicking the tires so to speak and we're now working with our state and local partners to make sure we upgrade and fill in on those areas where they found shortcomings.
One of the critical things we did early on was to identify the need for and designate a chief medical officer for the department. That's not because we're going to push the Department of Health and Human Services out of the way, but because so much of what we do in preparedness has got to be influenced by a real understanding of what medical realities are. If we talk, for example, about screening for epidemics or pandemics, and we have to build a system at the border to allow us to screen, we can't do that intelligently if we don't have somebody who can advise us about what is medically possible and what is not medically possible, what can be screened for and what can't be screened for.
And Dr. Runge comes to us with a long set of experiences in emergency medicine as a doctor himself, an emergency specialist, and as the former head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. So we've, again, brought that expertise into play in a very practical way so we can really put preparedness at the very top of our agenda.
One of the things we learned by the way when we did one of our recent exercises, TOPOFF3, which is a scenario in which we essentially had a hypothetical biological attack on New Jersey, is that at every stage of the decision-making process, you can't make intelligent decisions if you don't have very good advice on medical and biological issues. And another thing we saw was that our ability to interact intelligently with the private hospital sector, with state health authorities, with local health authorities, and with our federal authorities was enhanced by having people in the department that can speak the language and understand the concepts.
So let me step back and first talk very briefly about roles and responsibilities.
In our system, as I said earlier, the principal responsibility to provide for the safety and security of citizens before an event happens and in the immediate aftermath of an event lies with local government. It's local government which has the authority and the know-how to put together that initial emergency plan, to figure out what the right evacuation route is, to arrange for public transportation, to take care of those people who can't help themselves, and who set up and stock the local shelters.
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