CBRN and Hazmat Incidents at Major Public Events: Planning and Response

CHAPTER 12

Preparedness for Everybody Else

Preparedness and readiness activities should not be confined to the traditional emergency-services disciplines. The complex nature of the threat means that some non-CBRN/HAZMAT responders have work to do to get ready for a major event.

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION AND TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE

Many major events will be attended by large numbers of the public, such as sporting events. While it is generally not seen as an obvious component of security or antiterrorism planning, transportation planning has an important role to play in security and safety plans. Major events are notorious for causing congestion of transportation routes and public-transportation networks. Many transportation networks in major cities are at or near their full capacity on a normal day. Injecting tens or hundreds of thousands of visitors to a city will cause chaos and delays, even without the threat of terrorism. Of particular concern to the CBRN/HAZMAT planner is that transport chaos may create large accumulations of people at major choke points, such as hubs and interchanges. Congestion of roads may make emergency-response actions more difficult as well.

Such planning considerations are significant because congestion, delays, and diversions may serve to create a wide pool of soft targets for terrorists to attack. Transport hubs and interchanges are already significant targets for terrorism, but if they are more crowded than normal, this may increase their appeal to ...