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Boston held a “planned disaster” Monday
By WDavidStephenson | April 24, 2008
Amidst all the historical reenactments, Sox game (lookin’ good, boys!), and Boston Marathon, authorities also scheduled a major disaster drill in the Hub of the Universe Monday.Whoa! Was that a case of bad planning, or what? With hundred of thousands of people already milling about, weren’t the officials, as it were, looking for a disaster?
Nope.
As an op-ed in Monday’s Boston Globe pointed out, state and local officials decided that the characteristics of the event, i.e., hundreds of thousands of people milling around, the need to coordinate among many municipalities, etc. would also be characteristic of a real disaster, and thus offered an opportunity to test policies and procedures that would have to be applied in such a terrorist attack or natural disaster.
Boston EMS Director Richard Serino termed the Marathon and other events such as the 4th of July concert on the Esplanade (or, quick dispersals after DC’s 4th of July fireworks on the Mall), “planned disasters,” which commentator Arnold Bogis calls:
Sphere: Related Content“..safe, controlled environments that present ‘an opportunity to test some things you would never want to test in a real disaster.’”
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