New York's emergency HQ revamped

By Matthew Wells
BBC News, New York

The new OEM has moved location to downtown Brooklyn

Some eight hours after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, the mayor's emergency command headquarters that stood nearby came crashing down.

The new Office of Emergency Management - or OEM for short - is very different from its predecessor in many ways - starting with its location, away from Lower Manhattan, in downtown Brooklyn.

The former Red Cross building was heavily renovated according to stringent environmental specifications, and opened formally just a few weeks ago.

"If I need to speak to the mayor, I can run across the [Brooklyn] bridge," said the man in charge of the new state-of-the-art facility, Commissioner Joseph Bruno.

He denied that removing the OEM from Manhattan had been a matter of deliberate policy, but it is pretty well acknowledged now that having it so close to the Twin Towers - which had been targeted already by terrorists less than a decade earlier - was a serious mistake.

Lessons learnt

The OEM was created in 1996 and it is responsible for developing and overseeing New York's disaster management plans on every level.

Its own publicity brochure describes it this way: "OEM plans and prepares for emergencies; educates the public about preparedness; coordinates response and recovery; and... disseminates emergency information."

The phones were ringing off the hook in here, everyone in the world wanted information... Mark Clampet

The lessons of 11 September 2001 have been absorbed into the new building - both physically, and operationally.

From the outside, it looks like the home of a small but profitable utility company, but inside it more resembles the set of the hit terror-era TV drama, 24.

It could not withstand a nuclear strike, and management are keen to avoid comparisons with a high-tech military bunker. But faced with most urban disasters the place could function as the city's nerve centre for days on end.

"People get a little upset at anything now - they get a little antsy," said Mr Bruno, referring to the incident earlier this month when a strange gas odour permeated across lower and midtown Manhattan.

It turned out to be harmless, but the source still remains a mystery. As journalists toured the Watch Command area at the heart of the OEM building, deputy director Mark Clampet, described what it had been like that day - dealing with one of the first tests for the new centre:

"The phones were ringing off the hook in here, everyone in the world wanted information... Unfortunately, that hinders our operation. We did what we needed to do, and coordinated with other agencies."

Inner sanctum

At the other end of the huge floor which houses Watch Command - which is a sea of computer screens and wall-to-wall television monitors - is the Situation Room.

The Situation Room is the nerve centre of the new OEM

We were assured that it was devised long before the CNN daily news show of the same name, and it has the added benefit of being real, not just a portentous set.

On the day of the gas leak, the people that make New York tick huddled there to assess the impact of what was going on. By early afternoon the media frenzy and frantic calls from corporate offices asking for instructions had died down.

Next to the Situation Room is an ever smaller inner sanctum which has been designed especially for the mayor, in the event of a major emergency. It has a sofa-bed that pulls out in case he - or she - needs to stay on deck through the night.

In the main Emergency Operations Center are 130 desks, each allocated to the multitude of different local and national agencies that are expected to be present during a 9/11 style crisis. The hope, of course, is that they will be empty for as long as possible.

'Ready New York'

If there is a next time, the mayor and his commissioners are determined there will be no repeat of the inter-agency squabbling and blinkeredness that was so thoroughly detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report.

We want to get peoples' attention, but we also want people to sleep at night Christina Farrell

But planning for terror attacks, hurricanes and blackouts is only part of what the OEM does. It also runs a public information campaign dubbed Ready New York which tries to prepare the city for a variety of disasters.

Brochures and leaflets are distributed at subway stations and baseball games - a more detailed and practical addition to the infamous colour-alert system.

But for a city that is already more antsy than most, giving out details of what should go into every household's Go Bag - emergency supplies standing near the door in the event of a major evacuation - might be construed as alarmist.

That is something that the OEM is well aware of, according to assistant commissioner Christina Farrell.

"It is something we wrestle with. We want to get peoples' attention, but we also want people to sleep at night," she said.

"We try to take that nervous energy, and turn it into something positive. I think it is very empowering."