TUCSON, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- My office answers the phone for Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. I was not surprised to receive calls after Sept. 11 asking "Where are the bomb shelters in Tucson?"
Callers were incredulous when I told them they were gone and that all the supplies were sold 10 years ago.
Most Americans probably hadn't paid much much attention then and assume now that the government of the world's only superpower is taking care of us, especially now that the Cold War is over. We are shocked at the events of Sept. 11, but they could have been worse, much worse.
In September, the warriors of the jihad used an airplane and jet fuel. They might already have a suitcase nuke or two --hijacked or bought from China or maybe even sent from Russia.
Taliban allies are developing long-range rockets. Technology, be it crude or sophisticated, can deliver any or all of the unholy trinity of mass destruction: nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
People used to say this was "impossible and unthinkable."
But between the World Trade Center and the anthrax postal bombs, our field of the possible has expanded. We now realize that which is unthinkable to us is not unthinkable to everyone. The assumption that it is makes a perilous foundation for national military policy.
Defenselessness was the explicit basis for the Cold War policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. As long as neither sides could insure against annihilation, we remained in an uneasy stalemate. In that vein, measures to protect American through a civil defense program were actually called immoral.
Consider the results of this thinking had terrorists brought the World Trade Center down with a ground-burst nuke.
The soot raining down on Brooklyn would have been radioactive. Thousands, probably millions of people in the path of the cloud would have faced a slow, agonizing death over the succeeding weeks.
These kinds of deaths are preventable, if adequate shielding can be provided for adequate time -- about 2 weeks on average.
The United States once had a civil defense program because it recognized this. It died with John F. Kennedy and, while Ronald Reagan tried to revive it with Gen. Julius Becton as director of FEMA, his efforts were largly stillborn. His successor, George H.W. Bush, had no interest in it. And Bill Clinton went so far as to abolish the Office of Civil Defense within FEMA.
American buildings contain much space suitable for shelters, but thanks to federal policy, it is probably not stocked with necessary materials. But it is not just lack of funding -- government contractors like Boeing are sometimes forbidden to prepare shelter space for emergency occupancy.
State emergency planning centers used to have thousands of survey meters and Geiger counters to measure radiation, so citizens could be advised when to take shelter and when it was safe to emerge. These instruments were disposed of or given away years ago and not replaced. Our county kept about half a dozen.
Our government has funded substantial research on protective measures for civilian populations, military facilities, and industry. But Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which conducted most of the studies, got rid of its library 10 years ago.
Believing that the U.S. government would never have a serious civil defense program, dedicated scientists such as Cresson Kearny conducted research on expedient shelters and radiation monitors that citizens could construct for themselves if they had some warning.
For a time during the Reagan years, the book Nuclear War Survival Skills was distributed to state and local officials at the National Emergency Training Center. Now the book is available only from private sources or from the Internet, but this assumes that electric power and connections are functioning.
In recent years American has progressively stripped away the rudimentary protections they once had.
If a weapon of mass destruction were used in certain other countries, say Russia, China or Switzerland, everyone would head for shelter. During the Cold War, all Russians underwent required civil defense training into adulthood. The Moscow subways are shelters equipped with blast doors.
Some believe all of Beijing could be evacuated underground in about 10 minutes.
Switzerland has shelter for all of its population, in all private homes and public buildings, that protects against chemical and biological weapons as well as radiation and blast.
Civil defense is the necessary foundation for all defense. America should begin to rebuild its own now. There are things the federal government could do immediately and at minimal cost, to put a workable system in place even while we are dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the anthrax letters. For example, the government could:
-- Encourage privately owned facilities that contract with the government to prepare and stock existing space for fallout shelters (or at least repeal any prohibitions)
-- Resume distribution of information on expedient civil defense measures tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratories to state and local emergency workers, emergency broadcast facilities, and interested citizens
-- Stockpile potassium iodide and directions for use to protect the thyroid gland in the event of fallout
-- Stockpile unprocessed grain and beans as an emergency food supply in the event that a year's crops are contaminated
-- Improve methods of detecting chemical and biological agents; stockpile and disperse antibiotics and antidotes; have instructions for Israeli-style sealed rooms ready for dissemination.
These few steps would go a long way towards protecting the American people in the event that the next attack on the United States is not foiled in time, something Sept. 11 frighteningly reminds us is possible.
(Dr. Jane Orient, an internist in Tucson, is president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, and executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.)
