Emergency response lessons from 9/11
The faces of missing loved ones photocopied and pasted on boards and kiosks by the thousands became some of the most enduring images of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
That the loved ones of victims of the attacks on the World Trade Center had to resort to such desperate, low-tech means to seek information pointed out fundamental flaws in how emergency services handled the catastrophe.
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David Simpson studies the aftermaths of natural and human-made disasters, including the way emergency responders coped with the 9/11 tragedy in 2001. His studies suggest ways to improve responses.
”As the news coverage unfolded, I saw families going from hospital to hospital desperately trying to find information on missing family members and friends,“ says David Simpson, assistant professor of urban and public affairs in U of L’s College of Business and Public Administration.
”I thought there had to be a better way, and I wanted to get involved somehow.”
Less than three weeks after the attack, Simpson, along with colleague Steven Stehr, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University, and U of L graduate student Nailya Kutzhanova, was in New York City. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, the three reviewed the methods of victim notification and identification used at the WTC site and developed recommendations for improving such methods in case of a future attack on U.S. soil.
Overwhelmed at first by the disaster and its aftermath, the officials they tried to meet with often were reluctant to help. But later, with time to reflect, city and emergency personnel were ready and willing to talk at length about the emergency response systems employed after the attacks.
”We were actually there too soon [after the event had happened],“ Simpson says. ”We had to gather data that by its nature perished quickly, but the situation was so different from anything anyone had experienced in this country that people were not ready to talk with us. They had no time to process the situation.”
Through its research, Simpson’s team found that official administrative channels were overwhelmed—or destroyed—by the towers’ collapse.
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As a result, friends and families had to find other ways to get information. In one instance, the Greater New York Hospital Association developed a patient locator website where people could search for loved ones who may have been admitted to a New York hospital. The site had 700,000 hits in its first three days and 1.2 million after one week.
Simpson said that although there were problems with the website, including misspelled names of those admitted to hospitals and that the site did not exist until 36 hours after the WTC attacks, it successfully served as an alternative way to send and retrieve information.
Simpson believes this tragedy shows that emergency personnel must now “plan for the unthinkable” and create logistical mechanisms for dealing with large numbers of serious injuries and fatalities in ways they never had before. He also believes the use of the Internet for victim identification will help ease the burden on public officials in times of crisis.
The researchers’ work is on the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center website at: www.colorado.edu/hazards/qr/qr148/qr148.html.
Among their conclusions:
- City emergency planners must think differently. Previous disaster plans in New York, for instance, were geared to responding to small planes accidentally hitting skyscrapers—not jetliners purposefully targeted like missiles to yield mass casualties.
- Planners must have patient locator and other systems created in advance to activate immediately in case of disaster.
- Cities must conduct emergency response drills simulating disasters that could potentially affect thousands of people.
- More research must be done into how to manage large numbers of victims, from patient information to the process of DNA collection and matching to identify the dead.
Simpson hopes that his research has helped emergency personnel around the country in some way. In many municipalities, planners have simulated disaster scenarios similar to those recommended by Simpson’s report.
“We can only try to generalize the recommendations as best we can, because we realize that any future terrorist attacks will have unique elements to them,” he says. “There are a lot of researchers gathering data in New York and Washington, D.C., so I hope we will be able to learn how to deal with the next situation to the best of our abilities.”
Information for this story was provided by Todd Wetzel.