posted
Okay...an alert happened today because a small plane violated DC airspace. This led to the immediate evacuation of the White House and the Capitol building.
While it is certain that VIPs (Executive and Legislative branch elected officials and families, various cabinet members, etc.) would be moved to utterly safe locations via underground tunnels, the vast army of workers is released, ant-like into the surrounding streets.
What are the most common methods used by terrorists worldwide when wanting to kill people? - Suicide bombs - Car bombs - remote detonation of bombs in crowded public places - bombs on timers in public places.
So, basically, evacuating the buildings to escape a Cessna might actually play into the hands of terrorists intent on creating death and mayhem.
Basically, it seems to me that people working in the White House and the Capitol are being treated as expendable buffers, whether they have taken an oath to protect the VIPs with their lives or not.
they are the ones that are sent outside, to crowd the streets, and provide the potential targets in the public places.
I was part of one such evacuation. The sad fact is that there's probably no way to evacuate one of the normal-sized government buildings in time to avoid an air assault (should it make it through the gauntlet of fighter air craft and the helicopter gun ships stationed in the area). But the evacuation does, eventually, flood the streets in front of these buildings with a huge number of people.
Sadly, I can't really imagine a better plan. You can't tell people to sit still and hope for the best inside the building. But I'm pretty sure if I were in ANOTHER evacuation, I wouldn't be in a huge hurry to get outside either.
posted
Stop giving the terrorists ideas! Jeesh. You'd think we would have learned after that whole Tom Clancy debacle.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
This reminds me of my high school's bomb threat procedure.
What happened was, we all left as one huge mass, walk about half a mile out exposed as a group, and then go to the War Memorial (basically a gym) and stand with 1000+ in a packed group.
So, if someone were to actually want to plant a bomb, they could put it in the War Memorial (which has no security whatsoever) and take out the entire student body. As opposed to setting it off in school, which would kill maybe 20-30.
We had 1-2 bomb threats a day every day for about a month and a half until it died down. People who wanted to get out of a test would just write "bomb" on a piece of paper, and then leave it in a bathroom. Sure enough, off we would go down to the War Memorial while the cops searched the school.
Bear in mind that this was also just after 9/11, when everyone and their brother was shooting up schools. If someone wanted to do that at our school, they could take out way more kids by calling in a bomb threat first.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
I wonder how many communities have a "war memorial" gym... there's one right in the center of Maui, right near a high school. So for a minute, I thought you'd gone to school here.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
Wait! You mean US Gov't agencies have evacuation policies? The things you learn after you stop working for the government...
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I'll take that bet! I bet that if Xavier pointed that out to a school official they'd say "You're planning to plant a bomb in the war memorial?!" and maybe suspend him from school. (Unless he's already graduated, in which case they'd call the police.)
Posts: 2715 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Sadly, I can't really imagine a better plan.
Some of the people who started leaving the second tower got themselves below the level of the second crash on 9/11. Some of them got saved, and more would have been if everyone had just started down. Of course, some people who survived would have died, too, because they would have been in the stairwell that got immolated when it hit.
It's a hard, hard thing. I can't think of anything better.
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