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Al Qaeda and
the Plaintiff's Bar
By Melanie Kirkpatrick
The Wall Street Journal via Dow Jones
An al Qaeda WMD attack is likely within
the next two years, warns a U.S. report to the U.N. made public last month.
The report cautions that the terrorist organization may seek "softer targets
of opportunity such as banks, shopping malls, supermarkets and places of
recreation and entertainment."
Which reminds me: How did that
terrorism-readiness exercise held recently in Chicago and Seattle turn out?
TopOff-2, as the drill was called (for "top officials"), got a lot of
advance publicity but not a whole lot after the fact. Under the exercise's
mock scenario, Chicago was hit with a biological attack at the same time a
dirty bomb went off in Seattle. The Department of Homeland Security says it
is still sorting through the results and drawing conclusions, many of which
will be classified.
But here are two early lessons learned:
First, there can be no effective response without large medical teams at the
ready. And second, that's not going to happen unless the issue of liability
is resolved first. TopOff-2 helped show that there was no shortage of
volunteers willing to assist victims of an attack -- provided they are
protected from potential lawsuits.
Consider Kane County, Ill., whose
fledgling volunteer medical reserve corps participated in the drill. The
volunteer medical reserve corps is a new concept, thought up in the wake
9/11. In the days and weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, offers of aid poured in,
but there were few organizations prepared to put volunteers to work.
The idea is for communities to recruit
teams of local citizens to help provide information and basic medical
services in a mass emergency, when first responders and hospitals are likely
to be overwhelmed. The Bush administration last year issued 42 grants of
about $50,000 each for three-year demonstration projects. Communities in 26
states are participating in the program, run out of the office of the U.S.
Surgeon General. Applications are being taken for grants to set up medical
reserve corps in 150 more communities.
Kane County's volunteer team is made up
of medical professionals who are not designated first responders --
dentists, podiatrists, pharmacists, medics, veterinarians and RNs such as
school nurses or retirees. In TopOff, their job was to set up a mass clinic
to screen residents and hand out antibiotics to those who might have been
exposed to pneumonic plague in mock attacks at O'Hare and other Chicago-area
sites. Ten volunteers took part.
Kane County has more than 400,000
residents, and Laura Andersen, the team's coordinator, says several hundred
volunteers could be needed in a real emergency. She could recruit plenty of
help, she says, if the state had a better law giving volunteers immunity
from lawsuits. Right now the only way her team can be activated (and get
immunity) is if the governor declares a state emergency -- which Gov. Rod
Blagojevich did in TopOff.
The problem here is recruitment. Many
medical professionals have bitter personal experience with the tort system
and are unwilling to volunteer unless they're protected from lawsuits. In a
major emergency, they'd probably throw caution to the wind and come forward
anyway, but the whole point of the reserve corps is to avoid a 9/11-type
situation where there were plenty of volunteers but no way to organize them
quickly.
The liability issue is "the biggest
problem," says Craig Stevens, a spokesman for the Surgeon-General's office.
His office is working with states on uniform legislation that would shield
volunteers from lawsuits (the American Bar Association could help here).
Good Samaritan laws, which only protect people who spontaneously offer help,
don't apply. But they're a useful model. Illinois is crafting legislation
that would provide immunity to medical volunteers in a wider range of
emergencies. Florida and Oregon already have such laws.
This isn't the first time the liability
issue has come up in the context of homeland security. Congress in April
forestalled potential lawsuits over smallpox vaccinations by setting up a
fund to compensate anyone who might be injured. Liability reform is an
essential part of homeland security. Without it, more Americans are likely
to die in a large-scale terrorist attack.
Ms. Kirkpatrick is the Journal's
associate editorial page editor.
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