A large-scale chemical incident with mass casualties is a realistic threat facing both urban and rural communities nationwide. The risk of misuse or accidents involving toxic industrial chemicals (TIC), which are widely stored in large quantities and are routinely transported by rail, waterway, highway, and pipeline, is substantial. Moreover, violent extremists have declared their intention to attack the U.S. homeland and demonstrated their willingness to use chemical weapons against civilian populations overseas. The relative ease of acquiring, diverting, or synthesizing chemical warfare agents (CWAs) make chemical terrorism by a lone wolf or organized group a realistic threat.
Whether the result of a deliberate malicious act, including terrorism, natural disaster, or an industrial accident, a large-scale chemical incident poses immense challenges to communities: released chemicals can spread quickly, and the response timeline to prevent fatalities is often extremely short. Decisions made and communicated within the first few minutes to hours of an event can dramatically reduce the number of casualties and the severity of their injuries. However, the information needed to make these decisions is complex and difficult to obtain and verify. Additionally, the individuals responsible for these decisions may not fully understand their need to share information and coordinate effectively with critical response stakeholders.
The short response timeline that often characterizes chemical incidents demands that preparedness begins and ends at the community level. The greatest impact on response that the federal government can make is before an incident ever happens, by supporting state- and local-level preparedness efforts. Therefore, to avoid unnecessary harm and ensure decision-making proceeds as smoothly as possible during an incident, the community must “Prime the Pump” on response and recovery activities. That is, the community must come together to prepare, plan, and prioritize; establish working groups and decision-making procedures; and develop wide-ranging communications strategies. Pre-incident planning activities have the potential to substantially influence the response and recovery process by: increasing the speed of response and the rate of recovery; reducing recovery costs; improving public health and safety; addressing major resource limitations; and/or informing critical decisions. The swift protection of populations surrounding a chlorine release described in the Prologue is a pre-incident planning success story: since the appropriate plans were already in place, local responders were able to quickly make the decisions needed to ensure safety and lead an effective response.12
Whether an act of chemical terrorism or an industrial accident, a large-scale chemical incident poses immense challenges to communities.
Footnotes
12. National Transportation Safety Board. (2019, February 11). Hazardous Materials Accident Report: Rupture of a DOT-105 Rail Tank Car and Subsequent Chlorine Release at Axiall Corporation, New Martinsville, West Virginia, August 27, 2016. (Report No. NTSB/HZM-19/01).