WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- The Department of Homeland Security wants fire services represented in the growing number of state and local government intelligence fusion centers.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a fire chiefs conference that the department’s Chief Intelligence Officer Charles Allen “is working to add fire-fighter personnel to state and local fusion centers.”
“Now some people might say, well, wait a second. Why do you want to put firefighters in an intelligence fusion center, which has intelligence officials and police officials?” Chertoff said last week at the International Association of Fire Chiefs conference in Washington.
He said that as firefighters were often first on the scene of an event that might be a terrorist attack, fire services had to be integrated into fusion centers to share whatever they learned.
“In many cases, the first person on the scene for an event where there’s an explosion or where there’s a fire is going to be a firefighter,” said Chertoff. “And what they see may very well lead us to recognize that the source of the fire is not an accident but is an act of terror or an act of criminality. And that’s why fusing firefighters and responders into the normal law enforcement and counter-terror intelligence fusion centers is critical to get a whole picture of what’s going on.”
He said including local fire services in fusion centers was part of a wider effort to “integrate fire operations into the very fabric of (the department). Our National Operation Center now has a fire desk. We now have a Fire Service representative sitting at the table with our interagency colleagues from the FBI, state and local law enforcement and the intelligence community whenever we deal with an operational challenge.”
