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Report: Turf wars crippled 9/11 response

Emergency Management Alert, November 6, 2007

A few weeks ago we ran a link to a report from the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), "World Trade Center Health Impacts on FDNY Rescue Workers: A Six-Year Assessment: September 2001 to September 2007."  We thought you might like to compare it with this report released through the RAND Corporation, issued September 12, "Lessons Learned from the Response to the Attacks on the World Trade Center", which addressed possible reasons for confusion at the scene.

The report said that "many organizations needed to rely on the results of hazard monitoring by other technical organizations that responded to the incident. However, since there was no unifying structure and authority that brought everything together and coordinated the effort, independent technical organizations reported different results, which added to the confusion about the risks and what equipment choices should be made. As one responder put it: '[A]ll the experts have got to come up with a common theme. I can't have [one federal agency] telling me, "You need Level A protection for this," and [another agency] telling me that a half-face respirator and latex gloves are sufficient.' Some of the disagreement and confusion was even ascribed to turf battles among the safety organizations operating at the scene."

Note: Opinions and conclusions expressed in testimony are the author's alone and should not be interpreted as representing those of RAND or any of the sponsors of its research.

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