The Homeland Security Group conducted a four-year survey addressing training, readiness and a variety of challenges faced by First Responders. Respondents of the survey included law enforcement, security, intelligence, emergency management personnel and other members engaged in homeland security and first response duties. The results of this survey show that after the attacks in September 2001, inadequacies remain regarding first responder preparation.

PRLog (Press Release) - April 30, 2008 - The survey focused on three main areas of concentration: Training, Hindrances and whether first responders feel they are adequately protected from a secondary attack. The questions posed during the survey address levels of readiness contrasting criminal vs. terror investigations.

Training

Respondents were asked if they believe their agency has received proper training to determine differences between a criminal vs. terror incident. Of those responding to the survey, 58 percent stated they lack sufficient training. Many respondents indicated they lack sufficient training in WMD-related preparedness. Others described information sharing issues. While this initially appears to fit within the category of hindrances, many indicated that they lack proper training regarding who to share with, how to initiate and maintain communication and what issues specifically require external coordination.

Hindrances

Respondents were asked three questions regarding whether the media, public or their own self-expectations hindered a criminal vs. a terror investigation. Responses indicate that 91 percent consider that the media poses a hindrance; 87 percent believe public expectations hinder an investigation, and 94 percent blame their own personal expectations as an encumbrance.

Preparation for Secondary Attack

Respondents were asked if they believe they are adequately protected from secondary attacks during a possible criminal or terrorist incident. The survey shows that 91 percent of those responding feel they are not protected. Numerous comments by respondents indicated they actually expect a secondary attack during a terrorist incident but they lack training, resources and personnel for such an event.

Homeland Security Group founder, Anthony M. Davis began this survey four years ago intending to measure the readiness level of first responders. “I hoped to find some successes throughout the survey that could be translated to agencies nationwide”, he said. “Yet, throughout the measurement period, the numbers remained constant. While we’ve been very busy as a nation, we may not have been overly successful in preparing and protecting our personnel. There’s plenty of work to be done still.”

Mr. Anthony M. Davis began publishing the Homeland Security Report as a free service to law enforcement, intelligence, security and emergency management personnel in October 2001. Each report is an open source view of homeland security issues and provides select officer safety information. Based on the ongoing results of the survey and discussions with first responders worldwide, Anthony M. Davis began authoring “Terrorism and the Maritime Transportation System.”

According to Mr. Davis, “This book is not so much about terrorism. It is intended as a guide to provide first responders a view of the perspective need for readiness in the face of a potential attack.”The expected availability of the new text, “Terrorism and the Maritime Transportation System” is in May 2008.

More information on the Homeland Security Group is available at http://www.homelandsecuritygroup.info

Contact Information
admin@homelandsecuritygroup.info

###

Lemme guess: Dan Rather on the pajama-swarm.

Right? Am I right?

So much for all your earlier railings against the media-as-gatekeepers from a year or two a ago. And goodbye to all that, hey? Fiction be like cool as long as it serves a Greater Truth. Fake but accurate.

Kind of like you, only without the accurate.

I didn’t say it before, but I’ll say it now: You sirrah, are a fraud and a charlatan. And a credit to your former profession it would seem - you’ve placed yourself in equal company with all of the so-called ‘journalists’ who turned out nice, nifty, false peices of unpleasant fiction under the guise of “reporting”.

Once a “journalist”, always a “journalist”. And yes, I did mean to use that as an epithet.

I look forward to full hearings, and the exposure of *all* facts regarding Katrina.”

Eileen, I also look forward to full INDEPENDENT hearings re Katrina but I am not holding my breath.

Lessons are what we’re after.

Jeff, seriously, screw you. Give me the facts, and I can figure out my own lessons. If you want to teach “lessons”, go run a Sunday school. I do not want some moralizing jackass preaching at me under cover of “journalism”.

I have never seen an answer to this question.

I too, have asked it several times, right here. It is always ignored.

If the feds share the blame:
What exactly should President Bush have done…and exactly when…and exactly what difference would said action have made.

If Nagin had used Amtrak and the buses prior to the storm, and Blanco had not delayed allowing the use of soldiers to protect the FEMA people so they were able to work the minute they got there….what exactly should Bush have done that he didn’t do?

Lance summed it up with “suckered by a local scam artist” and “cancer of our state”. Or as I put it from Day 1…. he’s lying.

JJ wants to attack all levels of government. My question is why? If one level was worse than another, why not say so. Gov Blanco, Sen Landrieu and Mayor Nagin were pointing fingers immediately. People were still trapped. I have asked over and over, what exactly did the Feds do wrong? If you are going to blame them, I need to know why. It is not that I doubt there were mistakes at all levels, I am sure there is enough blame to spread around with a 90,000 sq mile disaster. I want to know why you think you must distribute the blame in equal amounts? Why not facts instead of appearances?

Only a few questions that need to be asked and answered. Who had the authority to send in LA National Guards, Red Cross food and water and those nice dry school buses sitting empty in Baton Rouge? Such simple questions that I would think even a “professional” journalist could manage. Call me a nitpicker.

The truth is Mayor Nagin GAMBLED about Katrina and “no flooding” — but he lost; and some hundreds of people in NO lost their lives because of the gamble (and not using school busses for evacuation). Nobody deserves more blame than the Mayor.

We can NOT fix problems, unless we accurately describe what the problem is.

But if he HAD strongly evacuated, and Katrina caused very little damage, he would have been highly resented. Uncertain future negative events are not quite “facts”, but are not well dealt with.

WHat a load….notice how anyone using the phrase “all levels of government” invariably focus like a laser on the Feds?

Just like you are Jarvis.

What’s that you say? I’m factlually wrong? Well, facts are nothing, you can’t invalidate the larger truth here!

LIAR

Television news has apparently realized that it can’t compete with print and blogs on the mere reportage of accurate information; it doesn’t have the bandwidth, and the audience doesn’ t have the attention span. So they’re gone back to their Dan-Rather-and-the-hurricane roots and offered us pure, tabloid sensationalism.

Some journo-bloggers are threatened by this because they realize the selling power of TV’s cheap melodrama, so they want to steer the blogosphere in that direction. Blogs are still a text medium, so this isn’t going to work.

Let’s accept our limitations and do what we can in our respective media: blogs can put accurate information out and analyze it to death; TV can present raw emotion, faked or otherwise, entrancing morons and children. Neither medium can be all things to all people.

Damn.

What a load of crap. You can’t even get FACTS straight, now you think you’re qualified to give us “truths” and “lessons”?

WHo’s truths do you want to use Mr. Jarvis? Something tells me you won’t like the “truths” and “lessons” that don’t toe a certain political line.

And where does a lightweight entertainment infoscrub like yourself dare to comment on real journalism?

What good is any of this blather unless something comes of it?

For instance, last year Blanco’s incompetence with Hurricane Ivan hurt human beings…and she went on to do worse this year. Last year would have killed many as well, but Ivan co-operated.

Last year, when Hurricane Ivan threatened, Ms. Blanco was indecisive and lacked anything resembling leadership or authority. The contra-flow lanes on the Interstate system were opened far too late to be of any help and motorists were stranded on the road as the storm approached, unable to reach safety. Further, sick and elderly evacuees died from the horribly long waits in traffic. http://www.cornpone.net/2005/09/impeach_blanco.html

Here’s a post from September 2004:

http://www.cornpone.net/2004/09/big_easy_escape.html

In the meantime, a one-finger salute to our government officials here in Louisiana for the horrible effort at evacuation. Had Ivan taken a western turn, this would have been not only a major blow to New Orleans but a major loss of life.

Why are these clowns still in office and not in jail?

And huge multitudes of media liars know this, and do their very best to use passion to trump authenticity - as in CNN telling its interview subjects to ‘get mad’. Hurl accusations against the Feds with no concern for the legal chain of responsibility. Use human distress due to natural forces as the propellant for missiles against a President who was accused, with very small basis, as being responsible for it all.

He honorably apologized for those mistakes the Feds made, which were in their line of responsibility. The media liars paint that apology as an abject confession of turpitude encompassing the whole disaster - for which the first responders at City and State level bear the great majority of the blame.

With the greatest respect Jeff: you are correct insofar as you observe that the best journalism offers more than reportage of facts. But everything of value that journalism offers begins with facts. Facts are the sine qua non of journalism, even if they are not the sum of it. Journalism that does not begin with accurate facts is worthless because “truth,” “justice,” and “lessons” founded on fiction are illusory. Yes, give me analysis and passion. But first, be sure of your facts.

As others have observed, there are plenty of true facts to support an indictment of the federal response to Katrina. Why not stick to those? And kudos to Tim Russert for taking the responsibility as a journalist to correct the factual record as publicly as it was initially distorted on his watch. Would that all journalists shared his regard for factual accuracy.