by Rick Callahan, Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - In the anxious hours after last year’s terrorist attacks, a dozen dump trucks rumbled into place outside the Indiana Statehouse, forming roadblocks around the limestone foundation.
A year later, that mostly symbolic and short-lived gesture to thwart terrorism has given way to a sophisticated counterterrorism campaign.
Indiana now has an anti-terrorism czar, an anti-terrorism council, millions of dollars in federal funds in the bank or on the way, and, like every state, a detailed counterterrorism plan in the works.
That plan, which should be complete by November, will focus on:
-developing a statewide emergency communications system;
-creating a monitoring and response system for disease outbreak;
-securing Indiana’s agriculture, heavy industry and utilities;
-preparing law enforcement to combat terrorism.
Clifford A. Ong, director of the Indiana Counter-Terrorism and Security Council, has spent the past 10 months working to improve security across the state.
But he hasn’t let his serious task dampen his wry sense of humor. The former chairman of the Indiana Alcohol and Tobacco Commission’s muses that his job move shifted him from “cocktails to molotov cocktails.”
Jokes aside, he is deadly serious about the threat of terrorism.
“It’s a big mistake for people to say it won’t happen here,” he said. “That creates a weak link and I won’t be the weakest link.”
The state expects to complete a draft of it counterterrorism plan by November, after discussing elements of it during Gov. Frank O’Bannon’s Oct. 2 summit on homeland security in Indianapolis.
Then the actual work will begin to implement the procedures and technology needed to respond to a terrorist attack.
Yet money - how much and when it arrives from the federal government - will determine how fast the state can accomplish its goals.
Indiana eventually will get an estimated $50 million to $100 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, although the precise amount has not yet been determined, Ong said.
So far, the state has spent less than a half million dollars - a fraction of what’s needed to brace it for a terrorist attack.
About $200,000 has gone to Ong and his staff, mostly for salaries and travel, while another $136,000 has been spent by the Indiana State Department of Health.
The health department has so far received the biggest chunk of cash from the feds - about $20 million from the Centers for Disease Control. That money will prepare the state’s hospitals, health departments and emergency response personnel to detect and respond to bioterrorism.
The CDC has final say over how that money is spent. The state expects to get another $20 million next year and perhaps the same amount for a couple years after that to continue its work.
Getting Indiana’s public health officials and hospitals to work together in new ways is arguably the most important step the state can take to brace for the possibility, however remote, of bioterrorism, said Dr. Greg Wilson, the state health commissioner.
Wilson’s job comes with the authority to ban public meetings, issue disease quarantines and take other emergency steps to halt the spread of communicable disease.
But a deliberate act of bioterrorism would likely manifest itself differently than a naturally occurring outbreak, and quick detection would be crucial. So Wilson and his colleagues have created a bioterrorism response team and a disease-spotting network. An integrated data network with high-speed Internet links to every county health department is also in the works, so the agency can monitor patient loads at major hospitals. That is crucial because the first signs of a disease outbreak would show up in a surge of unusual cases at hospital emergency rooms.
“It would be a tip-off that something may be happening. It could be bioterrorism or a flu outbreak, but we have to have a more rapid way of determining that,” said Joe Hunt, assistant commissioner for information services and policy at the state health department.
Aside from health funding, the state also received $6 million from the Department of Justice to plan steps to combat terrorism. To that end, Indiana recently imposed new requirements to reduce the chance that a terrorist could obtain an Indiana driver’s license.
The more stringent identification rules were immediately criticized by activists for Hispanics and other immigrant groups, which complained the new requirements are unfair to some legal residents.
Two task forces also are evaluating the state’s agricultural industry, its heavy industries and utilities for weaknesses.
But the single biggest project relating to terrorism response will be a $250 million emergency communications system to allow officials from all state agencies and Indiana State Police to communicate.
That digital radio network should be in place within four years. The goal is to equip all of Indiana’s law enforcement and emergency response agencies.
“We can tell everyone `Go to Channel 10!’ and they’ll all be able to communicate regardless of where they came from,” Ong said.
Federal money may pay some of the state’s radio upgrade bill, but counties, cities and towns may end up footing their share on their own. It isn’t clear how much it will cost to plug the entire state into the same digital network, although some cities already have such equipment.