CBRN and Hazmat Incidents at Major Public Events: Planning and Response

PART IV

Response

This section is intended to be the “during” and “after” part of the book. Responding to incidents to provide lifesaving interventions is the core purpose for which all of our planning and preparedness effort is intended. This section is organized into functional chapters for essential response functions such as medical support, decontamination, and law enforcement. Some of my key recommendations are not easy to fit into exact categories, so I took my best guess and put them where I thought they fit best.

History and experience can point to many situations where planning, training, and preparedness did not translate into operational practice. While there are many reasons for such failures, most blame seems to eventually lie at the management level. Individual responders may make mistakes, but it takes management to allow mistakes at an institutional and corporate level. The challenge to managers and responders alike is to implement the planning and preparedness measures on the day of the incident. This is my way of politely saying that reading the first three parts of this book is a wasted effort if the ideas in them are not translated into reality on the ground.

This part of the book is not really written to be a “how to” manual for CBRN response. A compilation of detailed procedures to cover every eventuality would run for thousands of pages. Even then, it would have to be adapted to local conditions. If you have learned anything so far, it is that you need to ...