Home defense starts at home

Thursday, Nov. 15, 2001 | 8:43 a.m.

From Bob Andrews' perspective, the federal government could bolster homeland defense by allocating more emergency preparedness funding to local rescue workers, who would be first to respond to a terrorist attack.

Clark County's emergency manager since 1993, Andrews normally doesn't have much clout beyond Southern Nevada. But his sphere of influence broadened dramatically last week when he was elected president of the 2,000-member International Association of Emergency Managers.

Andrews, who will hold the presidency for a year, said the association's primary goal is to pry more money from the federal government so that cities and counties can afford more training, protective clothing and monitoring equipment.

"We've taken the position, and we'll follow up in Congress, that one of the problems with anti-terrorism efforts in the country is that most of our money goes to federal bureaucracy without a lot of results and not enough goes to local responders," Andrews said.

Congress, for instance, on Sept. 14 agreed to allocate $40 billion to fight terrorism at home, with $5.5 billion going to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But FEMA has agreed to allocate only 10 percent of its share, or $550 million, to state and local governments. Andrews said that is not nearly enough.

"The federal government has a way of keeping the money inside the Beltway, and we don't see where Washington is accountable for use of that money," Andrews said.

Preparing for terrorist attacks does not come cheaply. Andrews said it costs $100,000 to $500,000 to conduct a full-scale training exercise that simulates the aftermath of a terrorist event. Clark County usually has three full-scale preparedness exercises annually, although he said that local rescue workers can always use more training. Emergency response equipment is also expensive. Andrews said the county has begun to experiment with telephones that rely on satellite transmissions to communicate over rugged terrain, such as in Moapa Valley, where typical hand-held radios are not as reliable. Satellite telephones, however, cost about $800 each, which is far more expensive than a cellular telephone.

As a representative of the association, Andrews will make numerous trips to the nation's capital and plans to argue for or against many of the 117 anti-terrorism bills now before Congress.

He'll have help, of course. He thinks association members from Pennsylvania will be able to bend the ear of their former governor, Tom Ridge, who is now the nation's homeland security director. Andrews said he does not believe that Ridge, who is coordinating some 40 federal agencies, has been given enough authority by Congress.

"Congress has to give him more authority over agency budgets," Andrews said. "In Washington, the competing agencies have been there forever. Tom Ridge can be put in a position where he can make a lot more sense of homeland security to bring about a more coordinated response and make sure that agency roles are well defined."

Andrews said his association is pushing for a national homeland security plan with clearly defined federal, state and local roles in the event of a terrorist attack. He also said FEMA and other federal agencies must do a better job tailoring federal emergency programs to meet local needs.

"We want to bring everyone together in a coordinated fashion so that Ridge and company truly have the reins in their hands," Andrews said. "We haven't had that coordination, and it makes the job at the local level more difficult than it should be."