apparent accountability because anyone was allowed in the contaminated areas (Murakami, 2000). This lack of accountability put all individuals responding and in the general vicinity at risk.
In the Tokyo attack, there appeared to be no real control in place. Essentially, the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing. As has been described numerous times, each entity did what their specified job was, but there was no guidance for the overall response. Not only did each entity work autonomously, but in the case of the emergency medical response, there was no consideration of controlling where patients were transported to prevent overwhelming one or more hospitals (Murakami, 2000).
In looking at the Oklahoma City bombing, at the onset accountability was initially minimal at best, but that changed after the area was evacuated for a bomb scare. During this initial response, private citizens and some public safety officials were operating outside of the Incident Command System. It is important to note that in major and/or catastrophic incidents, it is not uncommon for untrained volunteers, off‐duty first responders, and many others, to respond to the incident to see how they may be able to help. Unless the area has been secured prior to the incident, knowing who is present, where they are located, what they are doing, and the overall safety of the individuals is often not known during the initial stages.
After the area was evacuated for a bomb scare, control was strictly implemented (including accountability measures). As time went on, more accountability measures were implemented to ensure safety and an organized response. Some of the accountability measures included putting a perimeter fence in place and adding check‐in points where an individual had to be identified before being allowed beyond the perimeter. Further accountability measures required a specific site identification card with pictures and credentialing, and a chain of command that had supervisors for each person working at the incident. Each supervisor could not have more than seven people working for them at a given time.
The incident was also controlled by priorities. Those controlling the response had an initial priority of life safety. They wanted to ensure that personnel did not become injured or killed while attempting to rescue individuals or recover bodies. This was effective because after gaining control of the incident, only relatively minor injuries and no deaths were reported. Prior to gaining control of the incident, a nurse was killed by falling debris (glass). There were reports that this nurse was climbing through debris and working outside of ICS when a piece of glass fell and killed her (Nordberg, 2010). It is very likely that had she been working within the ICS system, that she would have not been killed.
The next priority by those controlling the incident was to rescue living victims. There is a good possibility that the thought process of those in control was that they could not do anything for those that were already deceased. With this mentality, they would initially bypass the dead and put their focus on the living. While some may think this is cruel or disrespectful, if they did not bypass the dead, valuable time and resources could have been delayed when they could have been finding and responding to the living. As will be discussed in later chapters, as public safety workers, we must first focus on life safety.
As more resources arrived on scene at the Oklahoma City Bombing site, control was exercised to ensure the most effective use of these resources. Police officers who traditionally do not undertake rescues were effectively used to protect the victims' families from the media, and from others. As clergy and psychologists arrived on scene, they were sent to tend to the emotional needs of the victims' families, walking wounded, and in some cases, the severely wounded. As construction workers and equipment arrived on scene, they were controlled and given jobs based on the priority areas and their abilities. An extensive list of resources was managed and controlled throughout the entire response (The Final Report, 1996).
In comparing these two incidents, it is plain to see that having control of an incident is more conducive when an IMS method is utilized. While part of the problem with accountability in Tokyo was the lack of identification that the incidents were interconnected, it is also blatantly obvious that even after identifying this incident as a Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) attack, that accountability was lacking. No perimeters were set up, personnel were not screened, and first responders were not documented when they entered and/or left the area. An overarching control that set priorities or priority areas was not initiated, and accountability was lacking. Responders and hospital staff were contaminated and suffered injury, partially because of a lack of control at the incident. On the other hand, Oklahoma City did not micromanage the response, but they controlled nearly every aspect of it.
2.5.3 Cooperation
Cooperation is the process of working together to accomplish a mutual goal. Cooperation requires active participation and a unity between responding agencies and entities. It creates a synergy whereby a communal effort is put forward to provide the best possible response to an incident. Cooperation is working with outside agencies in an effort to make the agency more capable of completing a task. They essentially work on the same project rather than competing against each other.
As has been stated many times, cooperation in the Tokyo sarin attack was seriously lacking. To accomplish cooperation with other agencies and entities, there must first be an open line of communication and a willingness to work together. In Tokyo, the needed cooperation and communication was nonexistent. This led to and helped to create an extremely hectic and chaotic response. Looking at the big picture, the lack of cooperation and communication led to more confusion and uncertainty about what had happened (Murakami, 2000).
Because there was not any utilization of a full‐encompassing IMS method, the response was a hodgepodge of (multiple) commanders from varying levels of government, each working toward their own goals. Even when command centers were in place, there was inefficiency, ineptitude, and ineffectiveness because of poor unit assignments that did not take advantage of each group's specialized training. Additionally, the multiple commands centers did not employ information sharing, cooperation, collaboration, and coordination, even after it was realized that it was one incident spread out over a large area.
These actions in the Tokyo incident were problematic, especially considering that a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and/or Explosive (CBRNE) incident requires a mix of specialized responders. Often, specific specialized responders are needed to mitigate the agent or agents and prevent the spread of those agents to uncontaminated areas. Of course, to effectively undertake such an effort, police or some type of security force are needed to secure the area (and eventually investigate), firefighters are often needed to extricate victims and decontaminate them before letting them go or transferring them to a hospital, EMS (sometimes along with firefighters) are needed to administer prehospital care, and hospitals are needed to treat patients.
Murakami (2000) states that the death and injury toll could have been greatly reduced if the management of the incident did not have such a lethargic approach by the Tokyo government. Pangi (2002) first identified that there was no planning for such an event, and specialized training Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, or Explosive (CBRNE) response was nonexistent at any level of government except for the military.
Information sharing was another issue. Because there was no coordination through information sharing between government entities, and relatively little information sharing between disciplines, the scope of the incident was not realized for over an hour after the attacks began. From the onset until the connection was made, each location that sarin was released was treated (by first responders) as separate incidents. According to Murakami's (2000), after completing interviews with a multitude of first responders and victims, it was found that each level of government worked independent of each other. In some instances, responders from the same level of government did not work in cooperation with their counterparts at the same level. Murakami's (2000) report stated, “There is no clear‐cut chain of command… The effort of local units were extraordinary but the overall emergency network was useless” (p. 193). He went on to say that there needed to be more integration of resources.
