by CIO Staff

Little Change in Systems Readiness Post 9/11

News
Nov 09, 20051 min
Disaster Recovery

We’re much better prepared to handle a terrorist attack now than we were right after 9/11, right?

Not so fast, says Bob Day. “We didn’t learn a lot, even after 9/11,” says Day, who’s now the Chief of Command, Control & Communications division of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Pacific area.

Day should know since he was based in Boston in 2001 and helped with the response to the attack.

After a luncheon discussion on disaster response Tuesday, Day said that state, local and federal officials still can’t talk to one another effectively in emergency situations because their radio and other communications aren’t interoperable. And he said that many contingency response plans drawn up after 9/11 at government agencies are now sitting on shelves. “These things look good on paper but many of the plans have never been tried,” he said.

–Susannah Patton