Monday, September 09, 2002
Tristate better prepared for attack
Authorities work on prevention as well as reaction
By James Pilcher jpilcher@enquirer.com
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In the midst of the afternoon rush hour, a tractor-trailer packed with a ton of dynamite explodes on the upper deck of the Brent Spence Bridge, killing potentially hundreds and paralyzing the Tristate's highway system.
Another truck filled with a potentially toxic substance is blown up on Interstate 71 in Kenwood, creating a massive cloud of foul-smelling gas. And a third truck blows up the northbound lanes of the Combs-Hehl Bridge along I-275 between Kentucky and Ohio, throwing not only the area, but also the entire nation, into chaos.
For now, that scenario remains on paper - a tabletop exercise enacted recently by regional law enforcement, public health and transportation officials.
Still, area experts, law enforcement and emergency management officials and even political leaders acknowledge that it could happen here. They say that Greater Cincinnati is as much a target as any other small to mid-sized city. After all, who foresaw the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing?
But they are quick to add that the Tristate was already better prepared than most before Sept. 11 to either stop such an attack or deal with its aftermath. And, since then, they say there has been even more improvement in these key areas:
• Planning, including the June exercise.
• Intra-agency communication, including a pre-Sept. 11 creation of a local multiagency antiterrorism task force.
• Practical preparation - area agencies held an actual recreation of a bioterrorism attack at Paul Brown Stadium last month.
“We are better prepared than we were on 10th of September last year, at the local level, at the state level and even at the federal level,” says U.S. Rep. Rob Portman, R-Terrace Park, a member of the House select subcommittee for homeland security. “With regard to Cincinnati, we're probably fortunate on a couple of accounts in that we do not seem to have some of the larger vulnerabilities and we do seem better prepared.
“But we can't take it to mean that we're not a target.”
Yet those who have become intimately involved with the issue over the past year acknowledge there is still work to be done, especially when it comes to figuring out who would be in charge in the immediate moments after such a strike or in filtering information that could prevent an attack down to the street level.
“There are still some big gaps,” Rep. Portman says.
Bull's-eye
Tucked away in the corner of three states, and with a population of almost 2 million for the 13-county area, Greater Cincinnati wouldn't appear to be tempting to would-be terrorists, what with Chicago and the Sears Tower about a five-hour car ride away, St. Louis and its visible arch within a day's drive, and larger East Coast cities also nearby.
Yet terrorism experts say that while Cincinnati's relatively small size and obscurity could mean it would be bypassed, they also say it could invite at least consideration by terrorists.
“The terrorist usually tries to vary his attack, and if a big city is a harder target, they go on down the list,” says Ed Bridgeman, a criminal justice professor at the University of Cincinnati's Clermont College and a terrorism expert who has also worked as an adviser with several area law enforcement agencies. “The reason Timothy McVeigh picked Oklahoma City was because the federal building there was undefended, not because of any significant value of the city. And never forget the value of showing you can strike anywhere, from New York to, say, Cincinnati.”
Mr. Bridgeman says the area offers several symbolic targets, including the corporate headquarters for Procter & Gamble, Milacron and GE Aircraft Engines, as well as Hebrew Union College and two major league sports teams.
And if a would-be attacker wanted to get practical, Cincinnati is what Mr. Bridgeman and others consider a “target-rich environment.”
The area is a major transportation hub for the entire Midwest. And the Federal Highway Administration says that in 1991, about 20 percent of violent attacks worldwide were against transportation targets, and in 1998, that rate had risen to 40 percent.
Consider that Cincinnati offers:
• Interstate 75 (the nation's busiest commercial trucking route) cutting through downtown and across the Brent Spence Bridge.
• A major train route, served by one of the nation's busiest rail yards in CSX's Queensgate facility, which ships tons of hazardous material through the area weekly.
• The nation's 24th-busiest airport in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, the second-largest hub for Delta Air Lines.
• Access to the Ohio River, a major shipping route for raw materials, especially coal that powers electrical generating plants throughout the eastern United States.
The imagined attack against the Brent Spence Bridge, the hypothetical situation presented in a workshop held by the Federal Highway Administration in June, could knock out all four of those potential targets with one blow.
Those who took part in the workshop say they were forced to close down the Ohio River to barge traffic, and divert truck traffic around the entire area beginning in cities such as Dayton, Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville and Lexington. Train traffic also would probably be halted, because a main train bridge sits adjacent to the Brent Spence and would likely sustain damage.
Airport officials also closed that facility in the wake of the pretend attack.
Such decisions would have national repercussions, with several power plants having to reduce their output, and grocery stores and other retail outlets complaining of empty shelves if a vital line of commerce were shut down for several days.
“Even if the initial casualty rate isn't high, such a strike would still be a success, because fear, confusion and frustration are the desired end products of terrorism, not just byproducts,” Mr. Bridgeman says.
Practice scenario
The exercise was fictional, but based on previous experience.
In fact, the scenario included preliminary background, such as:
• A buildup of activity by many associated with known terrorist groups had become active in major cities throughout Ohio and Indiana before the pretend attack.
• U.S. Customs agents seizing explosives on the East Coast.
• Reports of a stolen truck filled with the insecticide circulating a few days earlier.
The exercise allowed the terrorists to complete their objective, but local law enforcement agencies, including the local FBI office, say they are much better prepared to detect such a plot and stop it before it happens, especially since everyone is much more alert and looking for signs of terrorism.
“We've really put an emphasis on increasing communication with local law enforcement to create what we call trip wires, the guys at the ground level who will be the first ones to spot something,” says Robert Burnham, the FBI's local agent-in-charge who previously headed the agency's domestic terrorism section. “They're the ones who will come across the Mohamed Attas. With that in mind, everything we're doing is geared toward prevention.”
Since the attacks, the newly created Department of Homeland Defense, in conjunction with the Justice Department, has implemented a five-level color-coded alert system that rates the current threat of an attack. The nation currently stands at “yellow” alert, the third rung on the system. Prior to the fictional Cincinnati attack, the nation had been raised to orange alert, the second-highest rating.
The FBI also has begun allowing police chiefs to see raw information to make determinations on local responses and investigations. Previously, that information had been sanitized to protect sources, causing possible delays and gaps in the tips. A national “watch” system also has been created, allowing any police officer with access to the national crime prevention database to see whether someone has been tagged as a potential terrorist.
“That way, we can keep better tabs on people,” Mr. Burnham says. “If a police officer stops someone, they'll know immediately that we at the FBI want to know about it. That widens the network immensely.”
Mr. Burnham and others, including Rep. Portman, say that communication could be better between local and federal agencies, especially since every little tip can make the difference - pointing out that no mention of the Sept. 11 plot has yet to be uncovered in documents seized in Afghanistan.
“Such plans can be in the works for years and involve only two or three people, so everyone needs to stay alert,” says Mr. Burnham.
But Mr. Burnham says that the local efforts began even before Sept. 11 to coordinate terrorism information with the creation of a local multiagency anti-terrorism task force. He added that area law enforcement agencies have not engaged in the kinds of parochialism that Tristate governments have been accused of in the past.
“The information is much better now than it ever was,” says Mr. Bridgeman, who also serves as a Clermont County deputy sheriff and is the former executive director of the Hamilton County Police Chiefs Association. “I see it in raw form, and can say we stand a much better chance of stopping someone now.”
Aftermath
Officials with area hospitals and emergency management services also say they began such planning well before the attacks, and say they are confident they could deal with a situation much like the one presented in June.
Their plan focuses on a potential biological or chemical attack, since experts consider the threat of a nuclear strike - either conventional or through a so-called “dirty” bomb - is negligible.
“We've been working on this since 1998, and have had several federal grants even before Sept. 11,” says Don Maccarone, director of the Hamilton County Emergency Management Agency, which would coordinate the response of 49 different jurisdictions in the case of an incident. “We still haven't gotten all the holes filled, but we think we have them identified.”
One potential problem in a multiphased attack such as the one presented is determining which agency or even which person would be in charge of the response and clean-up, Mr. Maccarone says. One example of potential conflict: emergency workers and then construction experts needing to get to the Brent Spence Bridge to clear out casualties and assess damage, while the FBI and other law enforcement agencies try to keep the area pristine as a crime scene.
“It's amazing how complex these things get when you start looking at them,” Mr. Maccarone says.
Then there is the issue of the health-care infrastructure. A massive influx of wounded people or potential victims of a chemical attack could overwhelm the area's hospitals, where emergency rooms are already prone to go on “diversion,” meaning they can't handle any more patients.
But area health officials say strides have been made there as well, including creating reciprocal agreements with hospitals in other cities to send patients there in case of an attack.
“We've even created an alert system among all the labs at all the hospitals in the region, which not only has applications in case of a biological attack, but to help alert health care workers in case of an outbreak of flu or something like that,” says Colleen O'Toole, vice president of the Greater Cincinnati Health Council, a non-profit agency serving all the area's hospitals. “We're also in the process of creating an electronic alert system for all the area's doctors and health-care workers that would send out e-mails or faxes to say what to be on the lookout for and what to do about it.”
The Cincinnati Board of Health also recently pledged $365,000 to help fund a countywide Metropolitan Medical Response System, which proponents hope will serve as a national model of how to prepare for a bioterror attack.
“The goal is to create a unified command system,” says Cincinnati health commissioner Malcolm Adcock. “You don't want different health commissioners in eight counties or more going off in different directions.”
Another key aspect of any post-attack response is how to clear the area's highway system. An attack such as the one in the practice exercise would completely shut down interstates throughout the area, making it hard for emergency workers to get around.
Dory Montazemi, deputy executive director of the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments, says there is already an understanding that a lane would be cleared immediately for use only for vital traffic.
“This really was an eye-opener about all the chaos such an attack would bring,” says Mr. Montazemi.
America on edge
Nationally, experts have said it's not a matter of whether another terrorist attack will come, but rather of when.
That has left not only law enforcement and other public agencies on edge, but also the entire American public.
That anxiety may not be as pervasive in Cincinnati as say, Washington, where Rep. Portman says he still senses it everywhere he goes.
And the congressman says the fact that everyone remains a bit on edge, even a year after the attacks, might be what keeps another one from happening, although he thinks that the country “will have to endure some attacks in the future.”
“9/11 forced everyone to look around and see how better to protect their communities,” Rep. Portman says. “A little vigilance at this point will go a long way, even if it means we have lost some of our innocence.”
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