By Dan Horn and Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Firefighters, police and rescue workers are more ready than ever to respond to a terrorist strike in the Tristate.

But when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge visits Cincinnati today, he will find that they still aren't as ready as they need to be.

Rescue workers in Ohio don't have enough hazardous-material suits and other protective gear. The emergency radio system in Hamilton County doesn't allow all local jurisdictions to talk to one another during a disaster.

And some Northern Kentucky communities have yet to buy a single piece of equipment for the firefighters who will respond to a biological or chemical attack.

Although they have made significant strides in the past year, the people responsible for homeland security in the Tristate say they need more training, more equipment and more money to do the job right.

"I can write you the best emergency response plan in the world," said Edward Dadosky, the district fire chief in charge of terrorism response planning in Cincinnati. "But without money and equipment, it doesn't matter."

Communities across the country are grappling with the same problem as they try to figure out not only what resources they need to combat terrorism, but also how much they can afford to spend.

Many also are struggling to work more closely with a myriad of local, state and federal agencies that have rarely cooperated in the past.

Cooperation is especially challenging in the Tristate, where geography sometimes conspires against those who want to work together. The region covers three states, eight counties and more than 300 county and municipal governments, all with their own elected officials, budgets and political interests.

Relations have improved in the past few years, but there's still work to do.

"I think we're getting there," said Malcolm Adcock, Cincinnati's health commissioner. "Obviously, if an emergency occurs, a lot of things will fall by the wayside. We expect people to do what they have to do."

Ridge will meet with several of the Tristate's leaders in homeland security during his visit today. He is expected to talk about the many challenges those leaders face as they try to prepare the region for a terrorist attack.

Here's what he can expect to hear from local authorities:

More money, direction

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, local governments have been clamoring for more guidance and more money from Washington.

The Department of Homeland Security will have a $3.5 billion budget this year, but $1.3 billion is set aside for grants to local governments.

City and state officials across the country say that's not nearly enough. And as more time passes without an attack in America, the willingness to spend more federal dollars on homeland security seems to be fading.

"The further we get from 9-11, the tougher job I have in getting support," said Ken Morckel, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

Last year, Dadosky said, Cincinnati received about $81,000 in federal funding for homeland security, and almost all of it was used to keep existing equipment in working condition.

The city already has a hazardous-materials team, a bomb squad and several other units trained to deal with chemical spills or explosions. But Dadosky said his firefighters need more.

His wish list includes more top-of-the-line hazardous-material suits, which can cost as much as $1,000 each. Cincinnati has fewer than 300 of the protective suits and roughly 800 firefighters. The problem is more severe in Hamilton County, where many of the 49 municipalities have no suits at all.

"We've gone through training, but there are no suits yet," said David Heimpold, Springfield Township's police chief. "We keep hearing there's going to be money available, but we're still waiting."

Dadosky said firefighters also need better detection and monitoring equipment, but the best gear is also the most expensive. His wish list includes a $250,000 chemical detection system and a government computer program that would help track a plume of deadly gas by measuring weather conditions and using global positioning satellites.

"They tell us we're on the front lines," Dadosky said, referring to federal authorities, "but they aren't going to give us the best equipment."

In Kentucky, a federal grant of $7.7 million has made it possible to buy equipment for 14 hazardous-material teams across the state. But so far, Northern Kentucky's team hasn't ordered that equipment.

More training

Even with the right equipment, many emergency personnel say they need additional training on how to respond to an attack.

"Every week, it seems like there's a different threat and you're like, `Well, hell, we didn't train for that one,'" Heimpold said.

Although specialized units have been trained to handle anything from anthrax to a radioactive "dirty bomb," many firefighters and police officers who might find themselves in the middle of such an attack have never been trained.

"If there was a major catastrophic event in the city right now, there's still a lot of equipment and training we would need," said Joe Diebold, president of Local 48, the firefighters union in Cincinnati. "Training is our biggest issue."

Another is communication. Hamilton County's emergency radio system, which has been outdated for years, does not allow many jurisdictions to talk to one another during a disaster.

County officials are working on a new system now, but some say even that system, which will still have a limited number of channels, could be overwhelmed if terrorists strike.

"In a real emergency, I think it's going to fail," Dadosky said. "We're going to end up with people with handwritten notes running back and forth."

At least one problem - cooperation among different governments - has little to do with the federal government.

Although most public officials are getting along better now than they ever have, there still are issues related to setting priorities and spending money.

"There are a great many needs," said Hamilton County Administrator David Krings. "The thing that is most difficult is to answer the question, `How much is enough?'"

Local governments have tried to answer that question together, and have had reasonable success in recent years. The creation of the Metropolitan Medical Response System in 1996 was perhaps the biggest step forward because it brought together public officials in Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana.

Under that system, emergency personnel have agreed to share resources and cooperate in their response to any terrorist incident.

Even so, disputes arise. And even when everyone gets along well, the bureaucracy can make cooperation more difficult.

Some local officials complain that government red tape prevents them from directly asking other local governments for help during an emergency.

Under terms of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, governments in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana can request aid across state lines - but only if they first process their requests through officials in their respective state capitals.

Who's in charge?

There is another lingering question that confronts officials in Greater Cincinnati should a chemical or biological attack happen: Who will command the response?

The answer: A team approach under a regional "unified command" system.

"The reason for that is that responding to a bioterror attack will get very complicated very quickly. No one person can be absolutely in charge of it all," Dr. Adcock said.

Starting several years before the Sept. 11 attacks brought big-scale terrorism to America, officials from many county and city emergency response agencies in the Tristate have been meeting often to develop what-if plans for once unthinkable events.

The latest local step has been to establish a troika of regional emergency response coordinators who will act as liaisons between fire departments and other first responders; hospitals; and public health systems.

These three coordinators each cover eight Southwest Ohio counties. All have been selected. But because of pending final contract details, only one has been named - Mike Ottoway.

Ottoway, now working from the Hamilton County General Health District, is the public health emergency response coordinator.

"We're prepared to handle just about anything, up to a certain extent. But you'll never get an `A' for preparedness because you'll never get everything exactly right," he says. "And you'll never get an `F' because you'll always have a response. It will always be somewhere in the middle of that."

Reporters Jim Hannah, Cindy Kranz, Cindi Andrews, Jennifer Mrozowski and Sue Kiesewetter contributed.