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More Security Theater on the MBTA
Last night, on my ride home, I saw a bunch of postings up at the T sites, saying that there will be busing along part of the Red Line this Sunday morning, due to something I think they called an "Emergency Preparedness Exercise". I gather they're going to simulate some sort of emergency, and see how well various agencies respond. [irony]Because emergencies so often happen with 4 days warning, on a predictable schedule, and at a time when the system is relatively empty. Whether it's terrorists, medical emergencies, or mechanical failures, you can always expect them to happen when the system is at its least loaded, yep.[/irony]
It seems to me that this exercise is going to cost a lot of money and attention, and there is only one outcome which would actually be helpful. If this exercise shows that the agencies in question *can't* respond to a softball exercise like this, then we will have learned something important. But if they do a good job under these contrived circumstances, that gives us absolutely no assurance about their ability to deal with an *actual* emergency, unplanned, under a rush hour load. Whose bright idea was this, anyways?
It seems to me that this exercise is going to cost a lot of money and attention, and there is only one outcome which would actually be helpful. If this exercise shows that the agencies in question *can't* respond to a softball exercise like this, then we will have learned something important. But if they do a good job under these contrived circumstances, that gives us absolutely no assurance about their ability to deal with an *actual* emergency, unplanned, under a rush hour load. Whose bright idea was this, anyways?
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I'm just concerned that they won't learn nearly enough.
That may be, but while you might be accepting of more thorough practice, the public is not. If we take as a given that full-scale surprise runs are not available, then we are debating having something over having nothing.
And let's not kid ourselves - full-scale surprise exercises are expensive. They disrupt the entire city. Millions of dollars, and possible lives lost. Yes, lives lost - any major traffic obstruction that could delay emergency vehicles risks loss of life unrelated to the exercise.
How much is the city (not just the government, but the businesses and people) willing to pay to run exercises? Not much - the city took a whole lot of flack for the lite-brite bomb scares, never mind that it was an excellent exercise.
While the threat was misidentified to start with, from what I have seen subsequently, the system on the street (closing streets, redirecting traffic, and the other emergency management) otherwise worked well - when the people enacting it thought it might be real!
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Sometimes I dispatch what we call "Disaster Action Teams" to fires between 4:30pm and 8:30am the next morning - the colder the night the more the risk of fires it seems. Every Sat I standby to activate the Debit Cards we give families to purchase food and clothing, (certain, standard & specified amounts for each). Activators are offsite for "separation of powers".
Anyway, families need to have a disaster action plan not just for fires but for if they're in separate places when a disaster occurs - various places to meet up, various ways to communicate etc. And drills need to happen. The Red Cross has classes for families but sometimes I really wonder how many people actually pay attention.
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I have to agree - I don't know the last time when I saw or heard of a family doing so much as a personal fire drill.
But we should note that dealing with anything larger than a personal emergency cogently requires some knowledge of what the community around you will do. As far as i can tell, Boston's emergency plans are not what we'd call solid enough to try to communicate to the public.
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I suppose what gripes me here is the double standard. Politicians are perfectly happy to whip up a climate of fear in their rhetoric, but they aren't willing to *act* in an effectual manner, lest it inconvenience their constituency.
If we take as a given that full-scale surprise runs are not available, then we are debating having something over having nothing.
I really don't want to take that as a given. But I will (grudgingly) agree that something is better than nothing here.
Not much - the city took a whole lot of flack for the lite-brite bomb scares, never mind that it was an excellent exercise.
I think that's a serious oversimplification. The city government *took* flack largely about its attitude. They *generated* flack because the affair made them look silly. But since part of today's political climate is to never admit weakness in any form, including silliness, the cost was made out to be the primary issue and artificially inflated.
I agree with you that the system on the street worked well. It was the media and governmental responses that got silly.
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To be fair, I have seen no signs that the constituency has any tolerance for inconvenience at all. "Civic duty" isn't exactly a buzzphrase these days.