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CRISIS | RESPONSE V O L : 8 | I S S U E : 4 W W W . C R I S I S - R E S P O N S E . C O M J O U R N A L

CYBER SAFETYSimple steps to take

CBRNChanging attitudes

CITY RESILIENCESustainable urban safety and security

CRIMEPolice & terrorism

PLUS � Focus on Azerbaijan � Boston bomb attacks � Police training in Rwanda � Supply chain lessons in Iran � Interview with Nicholas You � Civil-military response in Austria & UK

� Emergency management in China

� Airport safety in Nepal

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US: Terrorist attacks, Boston

One Of the greatest deficiencies of large-scale, emergency response – notably revealed in the US in the

response to both 9/11 in New York City and Hurricane Katrina – is the weak co-ordination of multiple first-response organisations and supporting agencies in the midst of crisis.

But more than a decade of work to prepare responders for major operations has begun to pay off. The Boston Marathon bombing and the massive effort to identify and apprehend the terrorists this April, while not as massive a crisis as either 9/11 or Katrina, stands as a notable example of effective, co-operative first-response operations, as well as political collaboration. It demonstrates that at least some jurisdictions in the US have made important progress in overcoming the difficulties of multi-institution co-ordination during large-scale operations.

The centralised planning for this event drew on a strong culture of preparing for large ‘fixed’

events (for which time and location are known well in advance) across multiple professional disciplines (police, fire, EMS, National Guard). Although it took root earlier, this culture became much sturdier in the aftermath of 9/11.

When Boston faced the challenge of preparing for a National Special Security Event – the 2004 Democratic Party’s National Convention – it formed a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, multi-level planning group that worked for more than a year developing security plans.

Many lessons for future collaboration were learned from this, along with an emphasis

on the importance of joint planning. Boston stages many large-scale events, some annual, some unique – from a New Year’s Eve First Night celebration, the July 4 Esplanade concert and the arrival of Tall Ships, to parades honouring national championship baseball, football, basketball and hockey teams.

A strong pattern of collaborative planning for such events has become routine, reinforced by formal and informal efforts to train responders for co-ordinated action, to exercise across agencies, jurisdictions, and levels of government, and to build strong professional and personal relationships among commanders of law enforcement, firefighting, and emergency medical organisations.

While planning and preparedness had been directed by senior management, the implementation of emergency actions did not depend on centralised leadership. Significantly, during the crisis in Boston, the response

exhibited major elements of self-organising collaboration by small teams rather than top-down command. This resulted from the structuring of response in common emergency operating methods through the National Incident Management System (NIMS), as well as systematic development of organisational and personal ties among the diverse responders. Collaborative event planning, training, exercising, and deployment at many large public events that have not suffered emergencies, laid the groundwork for performance in crisis.

Footage of the explosions near the finish

line shows that blast waves pushed spectators away from the impact zone, but within seconds they began to run back to render help. The high density of the crowd contributed to the large number of injuries – but it also meant that there were many people immediately available to render aid. The number of people who climbed over barricades or tore them down to allow others to enter, and provided aid with whatever means were available, shows a city and a society at its best – people spontaneously helping each other without regard to culture, ethnicity, or nationality (the bravery of responders at the scene ran contrary to training to beware of secondary attacks).

The medical response was also immediate and skilled. Trained responders at the scene, working with members of the public, placed tourniquets, held pressure, and transported survivors to medical tents and on to ambulances beyond. Then teams of doctors, nurses, and clinical staff at hospitals took over. A large number of the grievous wounds from the blast and shrapnel would, in almost any other circumstances have proved fatal, but it appears that every person who was alive when definitive medical help was applied – in most cases, within minutes of the blast – is still alive today.

That success stems from several factors. Hundreds of medically-trained personnel were at the scene of the blast, the result of detailed central planning and learning from previous Boston Marathons and other events. Boston EMS and other local government and private emergency medical services had intensively trained and exercised, including with other responders, and had frequently deployed to special events.

In an ordinary Marathon year, thousands of runners come off the course needing care for blisters, heatstroke or possible cardiac

Boston Marathon bombing response

herman B ‘dutch’ Leonard and arnold M howitt say that 12 to 15 years ago, Boston would not have handled the Marathon bombings as effectively as it did this April, and that internal institutional preparedness and ability to integrate effort with other agencies are far superior today

As terrible as this attack was, we need to

recognise that it was nonetheless small-

scale – by no means the largest mass-casualty

event that we may be called upon to address

s

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incident analysisproblems. While not deployed specifi cally to aid bomb victims, medical personnel stationed near the fi nish line were skilled and adaptable and could stabilise bomb survivors, who were then triaged and dispatched to medical facilities which, real-time communication indicated, had the capacity to handle their injuries.

Fortunately, the bomb blasts did not directly degrade medical personnel and equipment positioned near the Marathon fi nish line – by contrast with the extensive loss in the Haiti earthquake of 2010. This suggests that future event planners should ensure that crucial resources are not concentrated in a single position and thus left vulnerable to attack.

Moreover, signifi cant changes in treatment of blast and shrapnel trauma victims, developed on battlefi elds in Iraq and Afghanistan, had made their way into home-front trauma response. In particular, tourniquets, proven to staunch blood loss from major injuries to extremities, were deployed in the equipment of EMS personnel at the Marathon.

ResourcefulnessBoston has an extremely high concentration of the nation’s leading tertiary medical facilities, each with an emergency room, trauma unit, and advanced speciality medical services. Five of these six facilities are located within two miles of the bomb blast. This permitted defi nitive in-hospital care for critically-injured patients in less than a half hour – saving many who otherwise might have perished.

In recent years, these medical facilities had extensively planned, practised, and trained for mass casualty events. While most preparation did not spotlight casualties from a bomb attack, Massachusetts General Hospital had recently consulted with experts from Israel about how to handle a sudden fl ow of blast and shrapnel survivors.

The surge of patients facing hospitals in this incident, however, was beyond their experience, planning and normal capacity. Instead of being overwhelmed, they met the surge of patients with resourcefulness, clearing space occupied by less needy patients and improvising to accommodate unprecedented demands.

Notably, in the moments of crisis, the response by medical personnel, both at the site of the blast and in the hospitals, was handled nearly completely without central direction. EMTs and physicians at the scene, following pre-established protocols and improvising as necessary, were largely self-directed in caring for the injured. Doctors and nurses with relevant skills converged on emergency rooms without having to be called.

Blast waves pushed spectators away from the impact zone, but within seconds they ran back to help others who had been injured

Rex Features

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On April 15, a few thousand spectators were tightly-packed at the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon to cheer on runners who, nearly four hours after the starter’s pistol shot, had conquered the 26.2 mile course.

At 14:50 hrs, a powerful improvised explosive device detonated without warning among the onlookers, followed 12 seconds later by an even more powerful IED nearby. Both scattered nails, ball bearings and metal shards intended to kill and maim. Three people died, and more than 260 others needed hospital care, many having lost limbs or suffering horrific wounds.

Those explosions began about 100 hours of drama that riveted the attention of the nation and left the local public shaken but proud. This account describes these events as the facts seem at this still early time of writing.

Within seconds of the blasts, medical personnel and many spectators leaped to provide aid to victims at the scene. EMTs triaged and transported the severely injured to area hospitals, where surgical teams mobilised and opened operating suites for immediate care to dozens who had lost limbs or suffered life-threatening injuries.

Law enforcement officers from many local, state and federal agencies converged to secure a 12-block area around the scene, search for additional IEDs, and begin to gather evidence that might identify the perpetrators.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino provided support to law enforcement and medical professionals, co-ordinated

their own governmental domains and connected with federal agencies and prosecutors. Senior elected leaders and law enforcement officials from all levels held regular joint press conferences over the next several days to keep the public informed. The Boston Police and other agencies also used Facebook and Twitter to provide public updates.

The FBI and state and local police collected video surveillance tapes from public and commercial sources and put out an appeal for photos taken at the scene that day. For several days, law enforcement agencies scrutinised hundreds of thousands of images, eventually zeroing in on two suspects; but efforts to match their faces to government databases failed.

On Wednesday, CNN mistakenly reported that arrests had been made, the NY Post ran photos of two ‘bag men’ it incorrectly implied were the bombers, and social media erroneously speculated about specific individuals.

On Thursday, April 18, President Barack Obama joined local leaders in a national broadcast service honouring the dead and wounded, as well as the first responders who provided aid and were searching for the terrorist suspects.

Meanwhile on Thursday, law enforcement leaders debated whether to release the suspects’ images to the public. Would this put them to flight or send them underground? Or would someone know and identify them? Early Thursday evening, the FBI posted photographs of the two suspected terrorists on its

website, setting off 24 hours of frenzied action. The terrorists, perhaps spooked by an email to

one from a friend asking whether it was him in the photos, left their apartment in Cambridge, killed an MIT campus policeman in an unsuccessful effort to take his firearm, then hijacked a Mercedes sedan and its driver whose ATM they used to get funds for their escape.

But the driver escaped and called 911, reporting that the carjackers had claimed they were the Boston Marathon bombers. Tracking the Mercedes’ vehicle navigation system to nearby Watertown, police converged on the terrorists.

Very early on Friday morning, a gun battle ensued in a densely populated but usually quiet neighbourhood in suburban Watertown. More than 200 rounds were fired, and explosive devices were hurled at police. The older terrorist, wounded, charged police and was knocked to the ground. The younger, also wounded, tried to run down the officers in the hijacked auto; but instead ran over the older one, who subsequently died. The fleeing terrorist abandoned his car several blocks away and escaped on foot.

The terrorists had been identified as brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 26 and 19 years old, respectively, immigrants of Chechen heritage who had come to the US from Dagestan in Russia about a decade earlier.

Hundreds of officers began to assemble, while those at the scene sought to stanch the bleeding of

The Boston Marathon Bombing

As ambulances delivered patients to hospitals, groups of clinicians self-organised into trauma teams. In one emergency room, people who were not needed to provide direct care realised that there was a congestion problem. They organised themselves in a side room from which they could be called as their particular skills were needed.

Several emergency room ‘incident commanders’ commented that they had to give few instructions. One said: “Everybody spontaneously knew their dance moves.” Mass casualty training and drills provided a structure for action within which improvisation to meet special problems was possible.

As the surgical teams worked, commanders became co-ordinators, helping to move scarce resources where they were most needed, dealing with the big picture, while providing support to the direct care teams.

Although the full story is not yet on the public record, well over a dozen law enforcement agencies from a range of municipalities and universities, as well as the state and federal governments, co-

ordinated very effectively in responding to this incident. They pieced together the nature of the attack; identified the two perpetrators’ images; responded to the perpetrators’ flight and engaged in a dramatic, but chaotic shootout that killed one; and apprehended the survivor after a massive manhunt.

Considerable progressWhile certainly not perfect, only a massively collaborative effort could have orchestrated the skills, databases, intelligence, technology, operational capabilities, and personnel needed to accomplish the many law enforcement tasks involved. No single agency had the operational range, manpower, or combination of technical assets and boots on the ground to manage the entire process.

In past operations, lack of co-operation and weak integration of effort have frequently hampered performance. The Marathon aftermath demonstrated that considerable progress has been made in establishing the relationships and organisational infrastructure that allow agencies to work effectively together.

Law enforcement agencies, for example, sifted massive amounts of photographic evidence from public and private surveillance cameras, news media, and spectators to identify the principal suspects. This required both considerable labour and advanced technologies. By publicising images of the suspects, the public could be enlisted in identifying them.

The rapid movement towards identification seems to have contributed to the perpetrators’ flight and ultimate capture. The police pursuit, gunfight, public lockdown, and house-to-house search – notwithstanding rough edges – also demonstrated the capacity of law enforcement agencies to work together. This improvement stems both from the experiences of planning numerous, major fixed events in past years, as discussed above, and from extensive co-operation specific to law enforcement as part of national defence against terrorism within the US.

The end game leading to the capture of the second principal suspect, involved deployment of officers from many agencies’ tactical teams, as well as robotic and heat-sensing technology. This suggests the

CRISIS | RESPONSE+ 21VOL 8 ISSUE 4

incident analysisutility of some of the investment made in equipment, training and technology to equip law enforcement with advanced capabilities.

Much of the federal funding for drills, exercises, and law enforcement training in the last decade has required that exercises be regional and multi-agency, so the process of collaboration has been practised regularly.

Starting only hours after the blast, the public was kept informed through joint press

briefi ngs by a collection of public offi cials. These were led by the Massachusetts Governor and Boston Mayor, and typically included the Boston Police Commissioner, the Massachusetts State Police Superintendent, the FBI’s Boston Offi ce Special-Agent-in-Charge, the US Attorney for Massachusetts, and the ATF Boston Field Division Special-Agent-in-Charge. As events evolved, other offi cials, when relevant, participated.

The collaborative presentations by

multiple agencies, levels of government, and jurisdictions visually presented an image of unity of purpose and co-ordination in action. This refl ected and encouraged the teamwork evident among the many organisations involved.

The briefi ngs were factual, avoided speculation, and emphasised both what was known and unknown. They were presented directly, succinctly, and calmly. Amid public anxiety, emotional turmoil and uncertainty,

these briefi ngs could not assuage all fears or provide all desired answers; but they were, nonetheless, a generally calming and grounding infl uence, helping the community develop a broader, consistent, more accurate view of events. One exception was a period of intensifi ed anxiety on Wednesday as an expected press conference was delayed many times, heightening apprehensions. But for the most part, the careful orchestration of the joint and collaborative presentation of factual information

played a salutary role throughout the week. Some 12 to 15 years ago, Boston would

not have handled the Marathon bombings as effectively as it did in April. EMS and hospital-based emergency departments would have been challenged by the number of wounded victims arriving simultaneously. Similarly, law enforcement co-operation would not have been possible to the degree evidenced, and the broad-based political leadership co-operation evident in the press briefi ngs might well have been impossible. Today, internal institutional preparedness and ability to integrate effort with other agencies is far superior.

Notably, as events broke swiftly, collaboration frequently formed bottom-up rather than by direction from above. Self-organised teams, often improvising their response, provided on-scene medical attention, facilitated hospital trauma care, and led to the ultimate apprehension of the surviving terrorist.

But this was self-organised, not disorganised teamwork. Though it responded to unpredictable events, it occurred within a framework of action and a culture created over a decade and more through training, exercising, planning and inculcation of the principles of the NIMS. Importantly, it was improvisation within a structured system, not undisciplined action.

In conclusion, even as we appreciate how the medical system and law enforcement managed to handle the needs of blast survivors and apprehend the perpetrators of the bombing, we need to recognise that a larger attack could have produced enough additional casualties to overstretch even the expanded capacities of the medical system. Two apparently amateur terrorists turned a major metropolitan area upside down on the day of the crisis.

As terrible as this attack was, we need to recognise that it was nonetheless small-scale – by no means the largest mass-casualty event that we may be called upon to address. The advances in institutional capability and co-ordination that the Marathon emergency response refl ected cannot be seen as an end point in the development of crisis management skill, organisation, and capacity.

an offi cer, severely wounded, possibly by friendly fi re. He was soon taken by ambulance to a hospital where he remained in critical condition for many days – but survived.

By dawn on Friday morning, law enforcement launched an extraordinary manhunt. Police had cordoned off a 20-block area in Watertown, while hundreds of offi cers commenced a deliberate, house-to-house search for the younger Tsarnaev, who was assumed (incorrectly) still to be armed. In case he had eluded pursuers, key offi cials decided in the early hours before the morning commute to shut down the entire public transportation system of the Boston metro area – buses, subways, light rail and commuter rail. In addition, the Governor of Massachusetts declared a voluntary ‘shelter-in-place’ order to residents, and a lock-down request to businesses, in a half-dozen towns bordering Watertown.

That order was soon extended to the city of Boston, covering in total about one million people in the metro area. Streets were deserted, businesses shuttered, and most citizens were glued to television sets, radios, or internet sites.

Public compliance was very high – remarkably so, it seemed to some observers – even though the lock-down lasted until after 17:00 hrs. Hundreds of police from dozens of agencies fruitlessly searched the 20-block area of Watertown. At the same time, authorities worked to secure the brothers’ Cambridge apartment, which they feared was wired with explosives.

As the search proceeded, residents in Watertown and the brothers’ Inman Square neighbourhood were evacuated from their homes with little warning.

Throughout Friday, the local and some national media maintained continuous on-scene video coverage. For the fi rst time in a major terrorist incident in the US, social media also played a large part. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and others danced with posts of opinion and ‘fact’ – both on-the-money accurate and mistakenly or maliciously wrong – from those at or near the scene or from monitoring police radio or media broadcasts.

Shortly after 17:00 hrs on Friday, the Governor, the Mayor of Boston and senior police offi cials held a televised joint press briefi ng to lift the metro-area lock-down, even though Dzhokhar Tsarnaev remained at large. They said the search would continue in Watertown and elsewhere, recommending that residents remain cautious.

Within minutes, however, a Watertown resident who lived near the edge of the search perimeter, reported in a 911 call that as he had gone outside for fresh air, he had seen something askew on a boat in his yard, looked inside, and saw blood and a man lying there.

Law enforcement personnel from many local, state, and federal agencies converged on the house. Fearing further gunfi re or explosive devices, police cautiously but rapidly evacuated nearby residents. Helicopters hovered above the boat, using thermal imaging to monitor movements of the fi gure inside. At one point, police guns fi red a major volley.

An FBI hostage rescue team tried to coax Tsarnaev out of hiding. When he didn’t move, they rushed the boat and subdued him. Badly wounded and having lost much blood, he was soon under arrest and transported to hospital.

Authorsherman B ‘dutch’ Leonard is Professor of Public Management at HKS and Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

arnold M howitt is Executive Director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS). Together they are Faculty Co-Directors of the HKS Program on Crisis Leadership

Self-organised teams, often improvising their

response, provided on-scene medical attention,

facilitated hospital trauma care, and led to the

ultimate apprehension of the surviving terrorist