Hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs - Nuclear Terrorism: Confronting the Challenges of the Day After
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SEN. SUSAN M. COLLINS (R-ME): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me begin by commending you for undertaking this very challenging series of hearings. This is an extraordinarily important issue. I often think that Congress sometimes focuses too much on minor issues. Certainly the threat of nuclear terrorism is a compelling and urgent challenge for our country, and I commend you for your leadership on this.
The committee's previous hearings have made clear that preventing such an attack must indeed be an urgent and compelling priority for our country. It's also clear that we must consider the response that would be necessary in the terrible setting of death and devastation that our nation would confront if such an attack were to succeed. As the report from the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project makes clear, the day after a terrorist attack is quote, "a grim prospect to contemplate" but policymakers have no choice.
A 10-kiloton device, a plausible yield for a bomb constructed by terrorists, could be smuggled into a seaport as cargo, flown over a city in a private plane, or driven into a city in a truck. Now we hope that the improvements that we've made in port security and other areas would make that difficult to carry on. But we can't exclude the possibility of such a successful enterprise. When detonated, this bomb could instantly kill many thousands and destroy buildings within a half-mile radius. In the aftermath, we would confront overwhelmed and obliterated local response capabilities, mass casualties, evacuations, and demands for food and shelter. Great numbers of people would be in urgent need of medical attention and contamination (sic). The economic and psychological impacts would also be devastating.
In some respects, planning and response for a terrorist nuclear attack would resemble that of any other catastrophic disaster. In other respects, however -- including the intensity of the shock in the target area, the initial pulse of radiation, the subsequent fallout -- a nuclear attack would have its own special horrors that demand specific preparations. These preparations ought to include well- thought-out measures to deal with the nonphysical damage.
A nuclear attack in a major American city would be an unprecedented event with profound emotional and psychological ramifications. Our preparations must include plans for providing steady flows of accurate information and for addressing the psychological as well as the tremendous physical injury.
No region of the country is immune to this threat. An attack would undoubtedly require a regional and federal response to supplement overwhelmed state and local capabilities. These are powerful reasons to ensure that responders across the country are supported at high levels of preparedness and that we maintain an all- hazards focus of the National Response Framework. Just as the Katrina disaster drew in first responders from around the country -- including people from my state of Maine, far from the disaster site -- a nuclear strike in any American city would require resources from well beyond the immediate area.
These resources would clearly include military units. As my colleagues will recall, however, in January the National Commission on National Guard and Reserves warned that because this nation has not adequately resources its forces designated for response to weapons of mass destruction, there is an appalling gap in our readiness.
Now, the commander of Northern Command takes issue with that, as do some other experts, but the fact is that we still have a long ways to go in resourcing and designating units that would be ready to come to the rescue.
We must also carefully consider the political and economic consequences of such an attack. Without careful and diligent continuity of government planning, critical services and the rule of law, at least in the affected areas, would be severely diminished. Our commercial and financial sectors must also plan to mitigate the initial losses and to provide for timely resumption of the economy.
To be sure, no level of readiness will prevent the horrendous toll of deaths, injury, property damage, economic disruption and political upheaval that would inevitably follow a nuclear attack. But proper planning can ease the suffering and mitigate the losses, and while it is understandable that our first priority has to be the physical impact, I'm also eager to hear from our witnesses today what we should be doing to address the psychological, the governmental, the rule of law, the economic consequences as well.
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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.
Dr. Dallas, your testimony makes clear that hospitals in the immediate vicinity of an attack would be completely overwhelmed and unable to cope and may well be obliterated themselves. And indeed, in a smaller way, we saw evidence of this when we investigated the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, where very quickly, only three hospitals were not incapacitated in the New Orleans area, and the state only had two trauma centers, one of which was rendered inoperable by the rising floodwater. So that raises real questions to me about the abilities of hospitals in the wider region to ramp up to respond to this kind of attack.
When I was in Jerusalem a couple of years ago, I toured Hadassah Hospital there, and I was so impressed with their planning and capabilities to deal with decontamination, for example, or to care for victims of a mass attack. They had procedures for totally converting their children's ward into a decontamination ward. Does any American hospital, to your knowledge, have that degree of planning and capabilities that I saw in Israel?
MR. DALLAS: The simple answer to that would be no. We work together with the Israel Defense Force and the hospitals in Israel. As a matter of fact, we work closely with the American Medical Association, giving training to health care personnel throughout the nation, and right now, we're using the Israeli model for trauma and explosive events, because they have the most experience in dealing with attacks on civilian populations, and we don't. We don't have that kind of experience. We're good at train wrecks and car wrecks.
But the answer is, we did a study on examining American cities, and unfortunately, our hospitals are all concentrated in downtown areas. The pattern we've followed over time is that the hospitals that were already downtown, they just keep getting larger and larger. And so in any conceivable nuclear attack -- we looked at 20 different cities; six of them are published in the open scientific literature -- and we lose over half in even relatively small nuclear devices. We lose about half of our hospital beds and probably half of our best trauma medical care personnel in most of these attacks, if they focus on downtown areas, which we're anticipated. So this is a real problem for us. But even with the surviving hospitals, if you look at the ratio of potential victims and patients to health care personnel, it's staggering, if they even get there.
You mentioned the Hurricane Katrina response. We've looked at those hospitals. And when you ask those hospitals, the 12 hospitals that went down and were no longer able to respond -- if you ask them what was the one item, if you gave them out of 20 things that they would want to do if you threw money at them, and it's security.
Nine out of 12 of those hospitals, when given a choice of 20 to 25 different items, whether it's more physicians, more doctors, a better health care plan, they say it's security. Security went down. In nine out of 12 of these hospitals, they closed because of security. And they want people with guns, basically, is what they were talking about. So security is a major issue for these hospitals, which is a gaping hole -- vacuum in response that we have right now.
Israel is a really excellent example for us to follow. We haven't significantly done that. We've come a long way since 9/11, particularly with physicians and nurses, paramedics, and of course the first responders, who have really come forward from then, but the actual hospitals themselves are rather weak. My organization has tested dozens and dozens of hospitals, and we've got a long way to go. That's a major weak point.
SEN. COLLINS: I think it is, as well. And I was struck by the high level of preparedness at the hospital in Jerusalem versus even our best hospitals here in terms of being able to ramp up and respond. I do think this is an area where we have a lot to learn, and I'm hopeful that an office that's been newly created as a result of legislation that the chairman and I authored within the Department of Homeland Security is going to allow us to learn more from Israel's experience and share more ideas with a country that unfortunately has more experience in responding to terrorism than virtually anywhere.
Dr. Carter, you raised an excellent point that after the first blast, the threat of a second blast could terrorize the nation and hamper the response. And even if the terrorists did not really have a second bomb ready to be detonated, the fear would be that they did, and we would have to act as if they did. That has consequences for our deployment of first responders, emergency managers, health care personnel. If Washington has been the subject of a blast, and yet there's a threat from the terrorists that they're going to blow up New York and L.A. next, how do decision makers decide how to allocate resources? Obviously we would start the international effort that you mentioned in your testimony to try to track down the perpetrators and avert a subsequent attack, but there is a very real immediate challenge of where do you hold back possible resources because you may in fact have to cope with a second or third attack.
MR. CARTER: It is an excellent question, and there's no easy answer to it, because there are only so many resources to go around.
What we tried to think through a little bit in our day after, and, I think, really DHS needs to do more on, is how the other cities can prepare themselves so that -- and take action to minimize their vulnerability while the emergency is being resolved. I mean, at some point, we'll police up all these loose weapons and resolve the situation. During that period, other cities will feel that they're next, and they need to posture themselves so that they are less consumptive of resources than the first, which got hit with no warning. So the only thing I can say is that the subsequent draw on this school of emergency responders should be less in the other cities if we have a thoughtful protocol for every city to respond to the now very real possibility that they're next.
SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.
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SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.
I couldn't help but think as we are talking about the public's understanding, and as we hear all of our witnesses predict that most members of the public would immediately begin fleeing, when in fact sheltering in place for many of them is the better option, that we've actually gone backwards in the public's understanding of what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.
Perhaps it's because I grew up in northern Maine next to an air base that had B-52s and everyone knew nuclear weapons were there. I remember the 1950s and the early '60s being instructed in school as to what to do. Now, granted the duck-and-cover approach was not going to be of much use. But I recall going home and being upset with my father that we didn't have a bomb shelter in the basement of our house fully equipped and stocked with water and supplies, and many families did back then.
Many families knew, ironically in the 1950s, that the answer was not to get into your car and start driving but rather to try to shelter and to be prepared to survive for a while on your own. Now, obviously if you're in the immediate blast area, that all becomes academic.
But it is interesting because I think the public in many ways is less prepared today than we were at the height of the Cold War. And at the height of the Cold War we were dealing with predictable -- relatively speaking -- state actors; we weren't dealing with the threat of terrorist groups having access to nuclear devices.
So I just mention that because I think there's a lot that we need to do to get the public more involved.
We tend to focus on the emergency managers, the first responders, et cetera, but we need also to educate the public.
I do want to turn, Mr. Gibb, to the issue of the health risks for first responders, and as Dr. Carter had said, once first responders have reached a certain dose they could no longer serve in the zone. My question to you as a state emergency manager is how prepared do you think that first responders are to operate in a post-nuclear attack scenario?
MR. GIBB: It's training that we used to do a lot of, that we don't focus a lot of effort on now in terms of preparing local emergency workers in the basics of radiation, having the dosimetry available immediately to them so they could perform their task in an environment where there's either existing radiation or contamination.
It exists best I think in those areas around our commercial nuclear power plants where there is very involved planning or in -- certainly every hazardous materials response team, you know, as part of their toolbox has the ability to deal with radiation incidents. Post 9/11 we built out and distributed 170 WMD response trailers throughout our state. But even in those trailers where we tried to look at a broad range of hazards, we've probably had two radiation detection -- you know, Geiger counters, meters -- and maybe 15 electronic dosimeters.
(To get a better ?) stockpile, it would take awhile to put that in place and I think the -- you know, the danger to the first responders is that in the early hours most of the responders to the incident, we would have no way of gauging what exposures they were receiving or what exposures they received until they either became ill or we're able to do sort of the back calculations post-event that we can make estimates.
So I think the answer to your question is, not very near to respond in this kind of environment.
SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.
Dr. Molander, let me just ask you a very quick question because I totally agree with you about the need to involve the private sector. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we saw that it was the private sector companies that were best prepared and responded to the challenge much better than government at all levels was able to do so.
When this committee wrote the SAFE Ports Act in 2006, we asked DHS to establish protocols for restarting our ports in the event of an attack, and Senator Lieberman and I have been somewhat critical of the department for not involving the private sector more in the development of those protocols. I know you did the exercise involving a possible attack on Long Beach; what is your assessment of the department's involvement of the private sector in responding to an attack on our ports?
MR. MOLANDER: I know the effort has been made. I can't tell you that I'm up to date. I wouldn't want to attempt to give you a real evaluation. But I know that they -- as I mentioned earlier that the government and the private sector face a mutual problem in the extent to which they can do prior planning because I think to be really effective it would involve -- I don't know if this is the correct term -- but some kind of collusion between, say, companies in the same business in order to allocate and distribute the response challenge in an effective manner.
In terms of particular ports, I know that obviously with the port authorities probably a lot can be done between the government and the port authorities. But I think still if there is an attack of this kind on a port it's going to close the port indefinitely. I think it's the -- as I mentioned, the capacity and the plans for moving whatever shipping was supposed to go into that port -- whether it's Galveston or Long Beach, L.A., or whatever -- to another place will be a major challenge, not just because of the fear that you don't want to open any other ports until you have some more assurance that there might not be a second bomb, but also the reality that there could be a second bomb. And the fact that lots of ports -- for example, the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach has deepwater capability that a lot of other -- very few other ports in the United States has. So there's real limits to what you can do in terms of shifting deliveries between ports.
But I think DHS is well aware of the problem, I think. But I'm not sure just how far along they are in achieving the kind of goals you set out for them.
SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.
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