QHSR – Chemical Disasters

This last weekend I had a chance to look over the Disasters section of the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) Dialogue. I was surprised to find no mention of the potentially catastrophic disasters that could result from a toxic chemical release from any of a large number of chemical facilities. Such releases could be the result of industrial accidents, adverse weather events, or terrorist attacks. To be fair one of the objectives of the 2nd Goal in the Disasters section would probably include such an event. That objective reads:

“Prepare for Catastrophic Incidents: Recognize the unique characteristics of catastrophic disasters, the requirements those characteristics place on emergency management systems, and the gaps between requirements and capacity.”

Current Ideas There were two ideas that did touch concepts that would be required to support emergency response activities for such an incident. They were:

“Educate Communities on Actions to be taken during Catastrophic Events” “Supporting locals, securing national infrastructure, and information stewardship”

While neither of these ‘ideas’ specifically addresses chemical facilities, anyone in the chemical security community would do well to look at these two ideas. My New Idea As my readers can probably guess, I came up with and submitted an idea that specifically deals with emergency response planning for high-risk chemical facilities. I won’t go into details of it here as that is the whole point of the Dialogue; an on-site discussion. You can find it at: “Catastrophic Chemical Incidents”. My Other Ideas There was some additional discussion on my “Controlling Access to Chemical Agents at Water Treatment Plants” idea that I submitted earlier. I also had two interesting initial comments on my “Interdict Threats to Chemical Facilities” idea from the weekend. Look forward to more input from the readers of this Blog.