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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Hank Christen
Aired January 19, 2002 - 10:15 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: From safety in the skies to safety in your city. Following the 9/11 attacks, many cities went on alert, but some were not ready for terrorism. In a recent CNN.com analysis of the nation's 30 largest cities, New York was found to be the most prepared to deal with a major disaster. What about your city?
Joining us now is Hank Christen. He is a disaster preparedness expert with the company, Unconventional Concepts.
Welcome to our program, sir.
HANK CHRISTEN, UNCONVENTIONAL CONCEPTS: Well, good morning.
O'BRIEN: It seems to me, you know, Unconventional Concepts, that's probably a good name for your company. You have to think unconventionally. In a way, you have to think like a terrorist in order to good at this, don't you?
CHRISTEN: Well, exactly. In fact, Paul Miniscavco (ph), the coauthor of my book and I were talking about this recently and it's the case of local agencies having to do some adequate threat assessments in areas that they didn't have to do before. Essentially, they've got to identify what we call "critical modes" and learn how to harden their soft targets.
O'BRIEN: Is it not actually a matter though, that whenever you harden and whatever you focus on will probably not be target?
CHRISTEN: Well, that's exactly right. And the second phase of this planning has got to be the ability to recover to surprises. And this requires any local agency, federal agency for that matter -- it requires them to have the ability to, number one, have a incident command system basically using the national incident command system for inner agency corporation. And also, they've got to have responders that are well-trained, well-equipped and well-staffed. And lastly, they've got to have a very aggressive mutual aid system whether they're small town USA or a New York City.
O'BRIEN: And you know, we're now, what, about four months since 9/11, what are the big lessons that have been learned relating to your business, post 9/11?
CHRISTEN: Well, I think some of the big lessons and in some respects, it's still an old lesson, is that local communities have to go back to all-hazard preparedness plan, in other words, do what they do best. You don't just prepare for terrorism.
I'll give an example. A fire department with a hazardous materials team doesn't need to turn around and form a terrorism response team or law enforcement or EMS doesn't need to form special teams. They need to go back and look at their mass casualty plans, their law enforcement response plans and say their hazardous materials teams and so forth and just refine them, make them better.
The same with local health departments. If the local health department improves its capability through its lab infrastructure and so forth, for normal every day things and for, say, the next disease outbreak then, in the rare occurrence that terrorism should happen, these response agencies are going to be better prepared.
O'BRIEN: Do you think, though, that with these agencies and we, collectively as a people, are able to conjure up these diabolical deeds in such a way that we can defend them? In other words, we almost have a naivete about the good intentions of people, I think. That's probably safe to say. We're a trusting people and that leaves us vulnerable.
CHRISTEN: Well, it does. And you know we've had the oceans to protect us to some degree and we've suddenly found that that doesn't work. And another thing the public needs to be aware of is there are internal threats. There's organizations throughout the United States and the media has shown some of their rhetoric. The Oklahoma City incident was an example of a homegrown terrorist threat. And we're looking at our vulnerabilities again and the unthinkable seems to be happening more often.
If I'd have told you two years ago, we've got to spend X amount of dollars to prevent airplanes from hitting the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, I would have been laughed out of the room. And now, of course, it's a reality. So, again our ability to look at threats, hard and soft targets, and respond to unpleasant surprises is the key.
O'BRIEN: Hank Christen is with a group called Unconventional Concepts. He joins us this morning from Pensacola. Thanks for being with us.
CHRISTEN: Thank you.
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