Evaluating emergency service interoperability & first responder training for emerging homeland security threats

2018-10-09In homeland security (HLS), the response methods of first responder organizations such as police, fire, emergency medical services (EMS), HLS, and special operations have evolved since the pre-9/11 era. In the United States, the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York cities on September 11, 2001, (often referred to as 9/11) resulted in the death of more than 3,000 people. The Bush administration responded to the attacks of 9/11 from the perspective of conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in Iraq (Obama, 2007, p. 1). At the time, first responders were accustomed to responding to state-based incidents and were not prepared for major incidents on such a massive scale (Carafano, 2003; Rudman, Clarke, & Metzl, 2003). One of the lessons learned from this incident is for first responder agencies to improve communications on multi-jurisdictional deployments. This study consisted of an examination of communications and interoperability among first responder agencies. Interoperability is the act of exchanging information and resources among federal, state, local, fire and police departments that are in neighboring jurisdictions of first responder agencies and deploy a tactical response to a major incident. The problem of practice is to increase interoperability among first responder organizations so that a unified chain of command is created for amenable solutions for major incidents