King County Executive Ron Sims joins Eric Holdeman,
manager of the King County Office of Emergency Management and host of the county's Project
Impact television series for a discussion about homeland security preparedness efforts in
King County.
Video text transcript
Eric Holdeman: Hello, I am Eric Holdeman and this is Project Impact, a show about emergencies and disasters that can happen anywhere here in Washington State. And today’s show is on homeland security, a topic that we’re hearing a lot about in the national news, and our focus today with our guest, Ron Sims, and Ron, thank you for being on the show today.
Executive Ron Sims: It’s good to be one your show again.
Eric Holdeman: And we’re going to be talking about, really, homeland security at the state, local, county, city level and the perspective on it, many times we just hear about that national picture and the local picture doesn’t come out, so, thanks for being on the show and I’ll shoot some questions at you here.
Executive Sims: That’s a good idea.
Eric Holdeman: Stump the Executive. Ah, you know, it’s been one year since the attacks, we’re shooting this show on Sept. 4th and next month (week) will be the one year anniversary for that. How have those events of a year ago impacted your thinking about disaster preparedness in general and terrorism in particular here for King County?
Executive Sims: Well, you know Eric, because of your leadership I’ve always felt that we were in excellent shape and I think that was recognized by the federal government. But after the terrorist attack we know there was more to do. And I think when the federal government recognized the professionalism in this area and gathered a number of you to go back to the East coast for a full week of training, I think that we learned a lot, and we’re in much better shape now than ever before. But obviously we had to make sure that we knew how to respond to acts of bioterrorism, whether they be aerosol or things put in water or things like infectious diseases, we had to learn about radiated materials, how to communicate to the public using different modes, and what would happen if we had a failure on the Internet, how to communicate, or if we had a failure in television, so basically, how to get information out to people, what things to be alert to in terms of our infrastructure, whether its roadways or bridges or our bus system, and I think we’ve endeavored over the last year to be able to respond more effectively, to acts of terrorism. We always, we’re very good at responding to emergencies, when we had the earthquake we demonstrated that, but obviously acts of terrorism which are designed solely to create fatalities quite frankly so both how to prevent it and how to limit the number of people injured. I think we’ve worked hard and endeavored to protect the public’s health and safety.
Eric Holdeman: Okay, alright, and um, you know there are some pretty significant challenges for city and county governments, you know there has been a national downturn in the economy, all public agencies are feeling the impact of a budget crunch, and that, um, how do you see that whole issue relating to the county, preparedness, and being able to, you know here you have this new, whether its national or international threat, I mean there’s the Timothy McVeighs, these lone wolf terrorists that may even be our neighbors unfortunately, some extremist groups out there, how do you, you know, balance that against the other challenges we have going on?
Executive Sims: Well, it’s tough. It’s not only the fact that we have a lot of responsibilities now but all the governments are facing significant reductions in their budgets and constraints and the idea of having one more added responsibility was tough to accept but you don’t have much choice. But I think the way it’s being addressed in King County is a great model, which is that it is a collaborative process, it’s utilizing not only this government’s resources but forming partnerships with other governments and the private sector. So cumulatively I think that resources are being contributed to the effort to provide a level of security for the public here and it’s because people have been resourceful and professional and committed to the welfare of the public. Yep, it’s really tough. In addition the federal government has made grants available and that’s been important as well. And a lot of it’s through volunteers. The other is trying to acquaint people with what they can do within their resources. When the public health department met with the hospitals on how to handle large scale emergencies and infections that may occur here, you know its talking to the hospital, when those people come, this is what you must do. So the hospital’s basic operations would be prepared to handle large number of people who are critically ill due to an infection that’s been introduced into the area.
Eric Holdeman: I take the anthrax attacks that happened out east and kind of rippled, even though there weren’t any cases here, we spent the better part of two months (I called it “anthraxing”), just running through this new threat of well, gee, what is that white powder and responding to concerns from the public.
Executive Sims: I can remember those days when every time we turned around there was a fire department that was responding with its containment vehicles to white powder substances that were all over the county, and it just wasn’t in our downtown Seattle area, it was in Bellevue’s downtown and Kirkland’s, Redmond’s, in Kent one weekend and Auburn, Federal Way, everybody was facing that. I think we’ve learned a lot about both its detection and the response but we’re still prepared and we still must be prepared. If we see anthrax or white powdery substances introduced into a setting, if people are looking at it and don’t know what it is, they still need to call 911 so that we can dispatch the appropriate parties to respond. But the anthraxing raised some interesting issues, both in terms of how to respond if its in an envelope or a box, also how to make sure that our system both in containment, who should be there first, and that was really important because everybody wanted to be there first and nobody wanted to be there first - I’m smiling at that. Fire departments were trained to contain, public health officials had to be able to move into those areas, at the same time we needed to have police officers create perimeters so that people could not get inside. So organizing that and who should come in first, which is clearly fire and public health, and then how to keep people who we think might have been exposed in an area enough for them to be taken to a hospital. Just the mechanics of doing that.
Eric Holdeman: Right. And having some commonality, that collaboration you talked about - in one end of the county someone is doing it one way and in another end of the county someone’s doing it differently - it confuses people.
Executive Sims: It had to be uniform in terms of our approach and we had to be prepared to execute it in the same fashion anywhere in the county under the same principles and controls, and you know we still have a ways to go, a lot of rehearsing, because those are easier said than done. Even though we know the rules and we know the protocols we need to continue doing what we’ve been doing before, which is we’ll practice bioterrorist activities, explosions, irradiated materials, as well as earthquakes and volcanoes as well as the other things that may impact the lives of people here. But the anthrax I think told us how unprepared we were for certain things and allowed us to move forward, again, because of your effort, in kind of an organized approach. We had to break down silos, you know, Public Health had its role and they felt they were key and the police and sheriff’s office had their roles and wanted to do more and we had to say no, everybody has a specific role to play. Fire had its role, the hospitals had theirs, and general emergency personnel - how to notify employees within a building - all of those things required some organization and a common approach so that the hospital receiving sites know exactly what happened outside of the hospital doors, but that fire, police, public health and other emergency workers knew what to do.
We still have challenges. We have challenges on what to do if the items are on ships on Elliott Bay and what do we do. And that means an interface with the federal government, whether it’s the FBI, the Coast Guard or the military, so there’s a great deal of coordination, it wasn’t easy.
Eric Holdeman: A lot of people play.
Executive Sims: A lot of people play but it’s important that a lot of people be involved in this because there is no single government, no single company, no single individual who can handle an act of terrorism. All we have to do is look overseas and see what other countries have done which is we call a mass mobilization - get all the stakeholders involved to move very efficiently and professionally. Somebody asked me today if there was a terrorist attack what is the one thing I would tell people to do. And I said, if there was one, and I hope there never is one, I would tell people not to panic, that there are number of people who are professionals, that we’ve organized it, that we know what to do, and the key is for the public to listen as to what the next steps are and that information will come to them very quickly. Because panic kills and that’s just a harsh reality here. We learned in the earthquake that people exiting buildings very slowly reduced bodily injury. So if there’s an act of terrorism the key, and New York has taught us that to, recent reports and digestions and key briefings showed that actually having communications devices, having chains of command that were precise and authority and the ability to exit people calmly.
Eric Holdeman: Your monthly fire drill, your quarterly fire drill pays off in any emergency.
Executive Sims: It pays off in any emergency but panic kills, so I would tell the public, get to that radio, get to that TV, get to that Internet site, because the training that you’ve provided people, the training that the federal government has provided for us, all has brought about I think a very professional organization that is both public and is private, dedicated to reducing the risks that the public has, either safety risks or health risks - we’re very good at it, just listen to us.
I hope they don’t panic. And I hope they don’t find (take) what we call those myths - everybody thinks that they are going to be exempt but biological material doesn’t exempt anyone.
Eric Holdeman: And a key thing here before we go to our break, what you talked about, that disaster preparedness, homeland security, it’s a team effort - no one individual agency can do it all and I’d just like to echo that, you’re exactly right. And sometimes it can be pretty tough figuring out what has happened in the event and provide accurate information but we’re going to do that to the best of our ability.
Executive Sims: No question. The federal government’s job is principally to stop terrorism. I firmly believe that’s their role, they’re very good at it, they have the resources for it. The job of both state and local government is not to assist the federal government in trying to stop terrorism but to be prepared to respond to a terrorist act. That’s what we will do best. That is our primary responsibility. The federal government’s job is not to treat, it is not set up perimeters, it is not to work with the hospitals, it is not.., they expect us to do that. And we’re very prepared to do that. But it’s a team. Everybody has to work and if we do that we can both stop terrorism and we can limit its impact upon us.
Eric Holdeman: Great message. And we’re going to go to break right now Ron and for you folks at home please watch this message and we’ll be back real shortly and continue this discussion with Executive Ron Sims on homeland security. Be right back.
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Eric Holdeman: Welcome back to Project Impact. If you’re just joining us today’s show is on Homeland Security and it’s a conversation with my guest Ron Sims, King County Executive. Ron, here’s a really tough question, it’s an elected official question. You know we’ve got everyday issues whether its health and human services, transportation is a huge issue for this region, I drive from Puyallup every day so I know all about our transportation challenges I can tell you that, and then we have this low frequency, very high impact, maybe, like an earthquake, like a volcano erupting, we might have a terrorist attack. How do you balance putting resources to division between those types of things?
Executive Sims: Well you know, you can’t, people want you to prioritize and there’s some things you can discard in terms of your responsibilities but you can’t discard emergency preparedness. So what I do is I put that on the same footing as public safety and public health and the other functions this government performs; on the same status. Because you know, I don’t wake up in the morning saying, wow, I’m going to have an emergency today. I don’t want to see an earthquake, I don’t want to see a tornado, I don’t want to see an act of terrorism, I just don’t; I don’t look forward to them. But I know that my responsibility is to reduce the risks to the public in the event of a terrorist attack or in the event of an earthquake and we better be prepared. So it’s like an insurance policy. And I know that you never want to take a risk with your insurance either. You pay it on time and you get the best policy you can. It’s a worthy investment. I think we have shown in this county that it was a prudent and worthy investment. I used to tease you a lot and say, “Eric, you have me practicing all the time,” and it’s always “practice, practice, practice,” and you’re so disciplined and serious, and yet every time that we’ve had an emergency all of that serious and all that practice paid off, and so therefore I have a very strong belief that the investments in being prepared for terrorism, being prepared for earthquakes, being prepared for flooding, are worth it. And yes they may hopefully come once every 100 years. I hope we never see again an act of terrorism in this country. But if one occurs in this county people are not going to say to me, “Mr. Sims, not investing was a good decision,” they are going to say “Why didn’t you have the resources and the structure and the staff and personnel to respond to it?” And so I give it the same footing I would give with the reactive patrol officers that patrol every single day, and the fire department personnel, the medic one people who are out there every day, it has to be at the same level of importance, you can’t cheat on it.
Eric Holdeman: So you would call it public safety?
Executive Sims: No, I wouldn’t call it public safety, it’s a different feel. You know how I look at it, I think it is the umbrella that we put everything under during an emergency. So we put public health under it during an emergency, transportation, public safety, public health. It’s the umbrella. So in those extraordinary times everybody is focused, everybody knows what to do because it’s a different unit, a different function of government, but it’s a necessity of government for the preservation of our quality of life, for the preservation of order and the preservation of, again, public safety and health.
Eric Holdeman: Well maybe a follow-up question to that. Ah, you might have answered it here but we do periodic radio checks on the 800 megahertz system, pager checks, telephone checks for the leaders (your cabinet directors, and that), and I know we’ve done these periodically, and pretty recently I got the messages “Ron wants to do more of these and he wants to do them unannounced, and during the day, at night, on weekends,” and you know, so..
Executive Sims: Well you know, here’s what I....
Eric Holdeman: Your staff are listening to this....
Executive Sims: You know what happened before is we went through the rehearsals and we were going to go through them but acts of terrorism are not planned and earthquakes are not planned and I wanted to know where our weakness were. So I obviously said that I wanted people to be… -- it’s called readiness, its just readiness. I wanted people to realize that those 800 megahertz radios needed to be nearby, their cell phones needed to be answered, they needed to be able to respond and call in so could an emergency happen, an act of terrorism happen at midnight? Yes. Could an earthquake happen at 3 in the morning or 4 in the morning? The answer is yes. Emergencies don’t come during business hours, between Monday and Friday. So I said that I felt we should create an environment of readiness. And that environment should be 365 days of the year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and so, yes, I asked that the rehearsals occur at any time. Not even telling me when they were going to occur.
Eric Holdeman: That’s true.
Executive Sims: I just said, if I’m not ready shame on me. And so I make sure that the communications devices are in my car, I was told to be within 10 minutes of my device, so I can do that. I realize I am not going to be able to call on the cell phone so it is important to be able to communicate and respond, so that we can continually explore where we’re weak so we can improve those things, so that the Cabinet members, the other senior managers, the emergency personnel - not King County’s only - but I mean, it’s a collaborative effort - those in the private sector, those in the fire departments, those in the suburban cities, that everybody would be kind of put on notice that it was important for us to be ready at any time to respond in a professional fashion.
Eric Holdeman: What you just said about - the point you made a little earlier about terrorism and earthquakes are “come as you are” disasters. There’s no, it’s not the hurricane you can see coming.
Executive Sims: It’s not the hurricane you can see coming, it’s the… I hope I never see them - the intensity of effort, the anxiety that’s raised. My responsibilities during an emergency are not to put my family first. So on the earthquake I had to go through a process of contacting the emergency center, I was in Olympia, getting up to that emergency center, the cell phones were down, and I was at the emergency center for a good two hours before I could call my own family to determine whether the household was safe, and that’s tough. That’s why I don’t like emergencies. Because my responsibilities are not to my family first - I’d love to think that they are - but it is to determine where they damage is, who’s been hurt, mobilize the resources, for the public first, and then to ascertain the needs of my own family second. That’s really tough and that’s why I don’t like them. But I also realize that I can be sitting in mass on Sunday listening to the minister and all of a sudden hear that beeper go off and realize that an emergency is in place and leave my family there and move on, realizing that my first responsibility is the health and welfare of the public.
Eric Holdeman: Well, how about, you talk some about your individual responsibility, how about King County government, which is a regional government, and something from Emergency Management’s perspective we’ve really emphasized, what do you see our role as a regional government in terrorism/homeland security?
Executive Sims: Well you know King County is, as a government, again, under your leadership and fine efforts, has been able to organize everyone - the fire districts, the fire departments, the cities, the power companies, the hospitals - so that it is a collaborative effort. And that’s really important to have and that’s the role of King County, to see the whole....
Eric Holdeman: King County is in charge.
Executive Sims: Oh no, everybody, you know if anybody breaks down the system breaks down. If the, for instance, we can be working just fine but if Seattle isn’t a part of our effort and Seattle goes its own way, that has real ripple impacts throughout all of King County. So there can be no soloists in this effort, it has to be a choir. As my father used to say, it is the multiple voices that create symphonies. He says that it’s when the person is off key that you have a “cacophony” -- which he says is a lot of noise. So it’s our job as a government to make sure that people are being very collaborative and that everybody feels that they are absolutely essential because they are really essential. And to make sure that all the interests are addressed, so whether it’s a Bellevue, whether it’s a SeaTac, a Skykomish, a Burien, the school districts, the hospitals, everybody has something at stake. Everybody has to be coordinating. There is no single function more important than the whole, so the whole has to work and it is that collaborative understanding of all of our respective roles and realizing that no single jurisdiction, no single can do more than just what they, we’ve agreed, is going to be their responsibility.
If you go down to the Emergency Operations Center that we have out by the airport you see that. A lot of people in that room, a lot of people being incredibly collaborative, and as we move out of that into another complex which is safer for us.
Eric Holdeman: And it’s really going to be called the Emergency Coordination Center….
Executive Sims: The Emergency Coordination Center, which is more secure, is going to be the finest of technology, we’re still going to see everybody in that room from various jurisdictions, from various business, and we’re all going to be incredibly collaborative. I can remember the bus companies, the school buses, trying to make sure during the earthquake where the buses would go, where they would go first and where they would go second, the building inspectors to go out and look at the buildings…. I mean these are, this is the community - I want to say this is government at its best but in an emergency it is the community at its very best using all of its resources to make sure that people can return home safely.
Eric Holdeman: Well listen Ron, we’ve got about two minutes left till the end of the show. If you have any final thoughts, kind of a wrap-up thought that you’d tell the public about this whole issue of homeland security.
Executive Sims: Well, I want to tell people that we’ve been working really hard since September 11th. It was a tragedy, it was an unconscionable act of terrorism. But the country is strong, this county is strong, and we have endeavored to be as prepared as possible. We still need the federal government and its resources, both financial and the resources of its agencies. And we need a collaborative spirit within King County and that means the public and private sectors, schools and building inspectors, every single city and fire districts, every system that distributes water, the Port of Seattle, and if everybody continues with a spirit of cooperation, I think that we will remain the best prepared place in the entire United States to live and to be able to respond to any act of terrorism. I just hope that we are able to be so good that we can capture them before they get here and if, if, they happen to visit our communities and they do engage in acts of terrorism that we will have the most incredible response. But I want to tell people, work with us and listen to us, support our efforts.
Eric Holdeman: Well thank you, Ron, for your leadership also on this big issue - and from my own staff, it isn’t just Eric Holdeman you know - together we can improve - and thanks for being on the show.
Executive Sims: Thank you for this show, it’s great.
Eric Holdeman: And for you folks at home we’d like to remind you that being prepared for disasters means investing time and energy into disaster prevention and preparedness for you, your family, your business and your school. This has been a Project Impact production, building disaster resistant communities right here in King County. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time. Bye bye.
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Updated: Sept. 13, 2002
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