Approval imminent for terrorism response plan

An integrated national plan for response to terrorist attacks and other national emergencies is likely to be approved by Cabinet secretaries by the end of this week, Deputy Homeland Security Secretary James Loy said Tuesday.

By this time next year, the final National Response Plan will have replaced the disparate plans now in effect at federal agencies that work terrorism response, the former Coast Guard commandant said at a maritime-security conference in Washington organized by Defense Today and held at George Washington University.

A February 2003 directive by President Bush required the fledgling Homeland Security Department to design and implement the National Response Plan and the associated National Incident Management System in a bid to "establish a single, comprehensive approach" to managing terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other large-scale emergencies.

The National Incident Management System is intended to guide operations during incidents and is based on the Incident Command System, already widely used by emergency agencies around the country. The broader National Response Plan lays out the administrative structure behind response operations, bringing together existing plans such as the Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan and the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan.

Under last year's directive, the response plan and operational system were to be developed by the Homeland Security Department, then reviewed by the president's Homeland Security Council, which includes several Cabinet secretaries.

The directive required federal agencies to adopt the incident-management system and to help to develop, and ultimately adopt in their own practice, the overall emergency-response plan. The president instructed agencies by fiscal 2005 to give emergency-response grants only to those states and localities that practiced the National Incident Management System.

Among the effects of the National Response Plan is the designation of a "primary federal agency" charged with managing the response to each type of incident envisioned.

According to a draft of the plan, Homeland Security's Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate would be responsible for incident response "regardless of the cause," as well as for general coordination of emergency management for all hazards.

Homeland Security agencies would also be in charge of several other areas. The department's Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate would be responsible for infrastructure protection and for information, and its Border and Transportation Security Directorate would be responsible both for border and transportation security and for terrorism preparedness generally.

The State Department would be responsible for international coordination, while the Defense Department would be responsible for protecting the U.S. territory against military attacks.