More Security Theater on the MBTA

[alexxkay]

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?

Comments

[tamarinne.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that unannounced drills fix the problem you're concerned with, though. You're comparing air traffic controllers (who thought it was a drill for too long, and could conceivably think that whether they knew a drill was coming or not) to police and fire fighters (whose jobs regularly expose them to real life-and-death emergencies).

I do see your point - a surprise drill does come closer to simulating a real emergency than a scheduled drill - but it's still a pretty far cry off. And the logistics of scheduling a surprise drill on a large or city-wide scale are pretty daunting, especially when you consider that you'd have to keep doing it every so often to keep everyone fresh and make sure any new problems hadn't cropped up. Not to mention the fact that you run the risk of creating or aggravating real emergencies by disrupting the emergency response system with the drill.

I'm just not sure that the benefit of making a drill a surprise outweighs the economic and social cost of that drill. That doesn't mean I've got a better solution, mind you. :) Perhaps smaller drills on a surprise basis, larger drills on a scheduled basis? I don't know.