A More Resilient Maryland: 12 Core Capacities for Homeland Security
Baltimore, MD
September 9, 2011
I want to thank all of you for what you do for us every day. I also want to thank Congressman Cummings and Senator Cardin for fighting the important fight to actually fund the most basic responsibility that any government, federal, national, or local has – and that is to protect the well-being of our people.
I’m so very grateful to you Senator Cardin – and to Senator Mikulski – for securing those dollars for FEMA. In this time of ideology, the victims of hurricanes, tornados and floods are not really concerned about party; they’re concerned about where their children will sleep at night, once their homes been taken away.
I also want to thank the members of the Obama Administration who have so greatly improved the importance and professionalism of FEMA. That’s a deliverable I can personally attest to over these past few years.
Dr. Michael Greenberger thank you for your leadership, not only at the University of Maryland but also on the Governor’s Emergency Management Advisory Council.
It’s hard to believe that ten years have gone by. I know that many of you as first responders remember exactly where you where that day – those images, what you did, who you spoke with, how it affected you.
I remember the next morning, making calls all over Washington, trying to find some office that would give me a game plan for what we should be doing, now that the unimaginable had happened on our homeland.
Eventually in frustration I called former United States Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who had done a lot of work on this. He said, “why on earth are you calling Washington? Washington’s not going to have answers to this for decades and decades. And you’re people can’t wait. Assemble the really professional people you have in your State – firefighters, police, first responders, as well as your health professionals. Assemble your own Baltimore Security Cabinet. A come up with your own plan to make your City the best prepared City in America, as quickly as you possibly can.”
That’s what together with some many of you in the room – Andy Lauland, Marcus Brown who have been at my side – have been working for over these last ten years.
In two days we will mark the 10th anniversary of September 11. Here in Baltimore, we will dedicate a new 9/11 Memorial, constructed in part from pieces of steel from the Twin Towers – twisted, melted pieces of steel.
Perhaps the most lasting and lifesaving tribute we can give to those who died on 9/11 is to better prepare our State – and therefore our nation – for the likelihood of the next attack, and the inevitability of the next hurricane or tornado.
Last week, the 9/11 Commission issued a report card on our country’s homeland security, ten years after the attacks. They wrote that quote:
“Today, our country is undoubtedly safer and more secure than it was a decade ago. We have damaged our enemy, but the ideology of violent Islamist extremism is alive and attracting new adherents, including right here in our own country,… the terrorist threat will be with us far into the future, demanding that we be ever vigilant,… Our terrorist adversaries and the tactics and techniques they employ are evolving rapidly. We will see new attempts, and likely successful attacks.”
Twelve Core Capacities
For the last ten years, you and I together as Marylanders have been pursuing – first in Baltimore, then in the State as a whole – 12 Core Capacities to improve homeland security. These capacities evolved out of our conversation in the aftermath of 9/11. And they continue to evolve. At the time, cyber security wasn’t even on our radar (in just one example).
Over the last ten years, we’ve been working on these twelve core capacities. And there are not many states in the United States that can say this.
Some of the core capacities overlap, because each is connected in some way to the other. An immune system is strong, not because it outnumbers that bad bugs, but because it’s better connected than the bad bugs.
So let me run through these:
1. The first is having interoperable communications—every day. First responders in every region of Maryland should possess modern, interoperable radios – as well as robust computer aided dispatch. In other words, we want the radio our police officers and firefighters carry to work every day to be able to communicate with fellow officers and firefighters in other jurisdictions, and in other departments.
Tragically, on September 11th, this didn’t happen. While police were ordering their personnel out of the towers, the fire department was still ordering their personnel into the towers.
We achieved interoperability throughout metropolitan Baltimore in 2004. And we have now achieved this standard of interoperability in Maryland on a metropolitan and regional basis. 23 of 26 jurisdictions are already covered, and the last three are coming online this year.
But we are also building a statewide interoperable communications network, which will connect everyone on a statewide basis. This has been a long time coming. It’s a huge investment, one we would not be able to make without federal support.
We expect the first phase to be completed by the end of next year. It will cover critical infrastructure like the Bay Bridge, the Port, BWI Airport, and the ICC.
And it will also give us the opportunity to help local jurisdictions, like Kent County on the other side of the Bridge, to replace outdated systems and to use the statewide infrastructure – not for interoperability in large scale emergencies, but for daily, basic operability as well.
In addition to being able to talk to one another, we also want our first responders to be able to share data. And we want their dispatchers to be able give them lifesaving information before they respond. Information like “this site has hazardous materials.” Or “this perpetrator has a history of violence.”
While many local governments have this capability, key state agencies, like the State Police do not, and therefore can’t share data with their partners. We expect to complete the core of the statewide Computer Aided Dispatch system by August of next year.
2. Maryland should have a robust closed-circuit television, or CCTV, network that secures critical infrastructure such as power and water treatment plants. First responders should have the ability to monitor highway cameras to aid in evacuation control – as well as cameras placed in patrol cars, helicopters, and marine vessels to aid in incident response. Camera owners should be able to transmit images via the internet in order to share video feeds with key facilities, such as Emergency Operation Centers and mobile command posts.
When we started ten years ago, friends in Baltimore City will recall that the only cameras in our City were the ones that were run by the Downtown Partnership. The City of Baltimore owned not one crime camera on 9/11. Within two years, we had built up a network of 50 cameras, which has grown to more than 500 today.
As recently as five years ago, when we came to office, the State of Maryland did not even know how many CCTV cameras it had (or where they were exactly). Today, we have more than 8,400 state owned and operated CCTV cameras,…
And more importantly, we’re networking and sharing state CCTV feeds with local government.
In the last few years alone we have more than tripled the number of cameras available on-line to the public.
What’s more, we have software to alert our operators of suspicious packages, for example, on a subway or light rail platform. And we’re able to send video to police officers and other responders on their laptops and PDAs. More than 700 local and state cameras were integrated this past weekend to secure the Grand Prix, acting as a force multiplier.
As Hurricane Irene hit our State, we relied on CCTV from Ocean City, Annapolis, and other parts of our State to monitor real-time conditions on the ground. What’s more, we had a live feed in the State Emergency Operations Center from a Baltimore County Police helicopter as it surveyed flooding up and down the Severn River.
Contrast that to 9/11 when a New York Police helicopter could not send video images of the disintegrating building core to the Emergency Command Center – pictures that might have led to a wider and speedier evacuation.
3. Next, is Rapid, Robust Intelligence and Information Sharing at every level. We’ve gotten better at this, but we still have – of course – a long way to go. First responders in every region of Maryland should have the ability to transmit and receive information from the field and share it on a real-time basis. Data should be fed into Maryland’s intelligence fusion center – and the center should share useful and actionable information, including data from the federal government. License plate reader data should be gathered throughout the State, and especially surrounding critical infrastructure sites.
General Alexander who commands the National Security Agency has a statement that I’m fond for repeating, and it’s this:“if we only knew what we knew.” If we only knew what we knew.
Some of you may remember the name Ziad Jarrah. He was known by the CIA to be a threat – this was ten years ago, but back then, federal agencies did not share information with one another, let alone with state and local government. If we only knew what we knew.
On September 9th, shortly after midnight, Ziad was stopped for speeding by a Maryland State trooper on I-95 north in Cecil County. Two days later, he was one of the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into rural Pennsylvania. If we only knew what we knew.
Today, if someone like Ziad Jarrah were wanted on a terrorist watch list, the trooper who stopped him for speeding would be alerted during the traffic stop and would arrest him on the spot. How? Through one of the most comprehensive fusion centers in the nation, which we’ve built here in Maryland.
Our Center brings together personnel from more than 25 state, local, and federal agencies ranging from the Coast Guard to the Gang Unit. In order to make it more useful to local law enforcement, we broadened the focus from terrorism to all crimes, and created a hub and spoke system by opening three regional centers, in eastern, western, and southern Maryland.
Last year, the fusion center answered nearly 12,000 requests of all kinds from local law enforcement, more than twice as many as five years ago. Some of these requests have to do with potential terror threats, others have to do with threats from violent drug gangs that have killed 3,000 Americans in Maryland since the attacks of September 11th.
Today, we have more than 300 electronic license plate readers in the state, with more than 130 of them already networked together in the fusion center and the rest on the way. This tool can help us track terror suspects as well as recover stolen autos. In Prince George’s County alone, since we prioritized funding for license plate readers in 2007, we’ve reduced auto thefts by 48%.
Our public safety dashboard now connects over 92 disparate data sources in one easy to use search engine for law enforcement. The dashboard receives as many as 68,000 queries from local law enforcement everyday – connecting the dots, sharing information, saving lives, solving cases.
4. The fourth capacity that we’ve been moving toward is improved transportation security. Maryland’s water ports, airports, highways, train stations, subways, and rail lines should be fully hardened against attack with permanent physical and virtual countermeasures such as CCTV, lighting and fencing.
Five years ago, the Port of Baltimore earned a failing security grade from the U.S. Coast Guard. Instead of CCTV, there was a Mickey Mouse system of fake security cameras made from wooden blocks. There were holes in the fence line and people came and went as they pleased. The contract security firm had to be fired after a spot inspection by the Coast Guard because guards were asleep.
Today, we’ve replaced the wooden blocks with cyber locks and more than 200 real CCTV cameras. The fence line is patrolled continuously and holes are fixed the same day. We have established an electronic access system so that we not only validate who you are, but that you have a valid reason to be there that day.
Our work has paid off—for the third year in a row, we have received a near perfect score from the US Coast Guard’s independent assessment.
We have taken the same approach to the rest of the transportation system. We continually upgrade BWI’s security system, and we’ve have added cameras and stopped vehicle detection systems to bridges and tunnels. We have have a network of more than 550 CCTV cameras on the light rail, Metro, and Amtrak -- all networked into a single command center and tied into dispatch.
5. The fifth capacity is knowing where your critical infrastructure is and hardening it. Every region of Maryland should have a comprehensive vulnerability assessment of critical infrastructure which is regularly updated. Maryland should have a complete inventory of critical infrastructure, including assets controlled by the private sector, and other potential targets, such as communities and populations of interest.
And increasingly under the vulnerability assessments, we’re trying to get our heads around the vulnerability, not only of our transportation and health critical infrastructure, but of our information infrastructure as well. Our cyber infrastructure, which is so vitally important to commerce, to finance, to people’s ability to provide for their families in the aftermath of an emergency, not to mention every day.
In 2001, very few counties or cities had conducted a vulnerability assessment of their critical infrastructure – chemical plants, tunnels, hospitals and Emergency Operations Centers.
We started conducting these assessments in Baltimore after 9/11, and one of the things we identified as a potential target, was chlorine gas. It was being shipped in rail cars for use in Baltimore’s water treatment plants. And so, with a multimillion dollar capital project started in 2002 and completed in 2005 – under the direction of our beloved, and departed Director of Public Works, George Winfield, we converted the plants from chlorine to liquid bleach – which eliminated the threat. And our efforts to harden these plants are ongoing. One of the further ways we’ve secured them is by installing new CCTV cameras. That’s just one example.
Across our State, we have catalogued 3,800 critical infrastructure sites across Maryland into an electronic database. And the counties have surveyed all their critical infrastructure as well. Together, we’ve been working to better protect these sites, to harden these sites, and to make them more resilient to an attack or a failure.
All hospitals and nursing homes in our State, now have some backup power that actually works. And in some cases, it’s been moved out of flood plains.
We have moved the Critical Infrastructure Protection Program to the fusion center, co-locating it with our intelligence analysts.
And we are using technology to harden our targets. In just one example, we have built a network of surface radar on the Chesapeake that allows us to track vessels and determine when one has entered a zone near a piece of critical infrastructure and needs to be monitored, or turned back.
That surface radar, also by the wap can be used to protect oyster sanctuaries. Poachers beware.
6. Effective hazmat and bomb squad response. Federal grants have been immensely helpful in allowing us to up our game over the past ten years. Every metropolitan region should have a Haz Mat team and a bomb response team, and there should be sufficient units statewide to provide a mutual aid response to any jurisdiction within a minimal amount of time. These teams should all be trained for both fire and law enforcement response.
Prior to September 11 we had bomb squads and hazmat teams, but we thought of them as separate units, and probably not as core counterterrorism units.
Today, we’ve established a regional response network across our six local bomb squads and the state’s team. All squads now share response data and equipment lists, and they train and exercise together. They even set their own response standard of one hour – four times faster than the federal response standard. And they hit it 95% of the time.
More importantly, they also cross-train with other SWAT teams. There is a night and day difference between the equipment they did not have on 9/11 and the equipment they have today.
7. We need to provide our first responders with Personal Protective Equipment. Prior to 9/11, personnel protective equipment, such as a face mask, chemical suit or breathing apparatus, was only for firefighters. But we realized that police officers and other responders may need the same sort of protective equipment, and it should be interoperable.
In Baltimore, using federal investments, we outfitted every police officer with a set of protective gear by 2004. At the State level, in 2010 we reached our goal of outfitting and training the officers in the State’s largest law enforcement agencies with a uniform, interoperable set of protective gear. One of my first acts as Governor was to provide the officers in the State’s five main police departments with a standard package of personal protective equipment as well as standardized training. In addition, we’re setting up bulk purchase contracts to make it more affordable for local departments to buy this equipment.
8. Planning. As part of the planning process, every region of Maryland should have the equipment, personnel, supplies, and plans for no-notice and advance-notice evacuation of its population, including special needs populations, those reliant on public transportation, and residents of hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living centers. And every region should have plans to shelter those evacuees.
We’d never send troops to fight in a foreign country without extensive planning. But when we first took office, an employee of the State’s Emergency Management Agency, MEMA, who is no longer with us, said that “planning is overrated.” We don’t view it that way.
Today we have agreements with eight sites to act as mass care, state run shelters in an emergency. We have plans to evacuate vulnerable populations. At MEMA, we reestablished the planning division, and made every local jurisdiction’s plan available. We now have an updated continuity of operations plan for every state agency. In addition, we completely rewrote our State’s core emergency operations plan and our hurricane plan, and developed checklists for key events like hurricanes.
Pam Spring, an able employee at the Department of Human Resources noticed that we had no plan for evacuating the 3,000 foreign student workers who live in Ocean City each summer. Some people laughed at her, but she held her ground. And during Hurricane Irene, we were able to quickly and efficiently evacuate and shelter the 3,000 workers – because we had a plan,…
9. Which brings us to #9 – drills and exercises: plans don’t mean a lot unless you train and exercise those plans regularly – and in fact, we had trained in advance for the evacuation of these foreign students. Prior to 9/11, I doubt many Governors or Mayors engaged in drills for emergency response. Today, every year my cabinet gets together to review, drill and improve our response plans to hurricanes, snow storms, and other likely threats.
We’ve developed a statewide multi-year Exercise and Training Plan. And, last year, MEMA provided more than 60 homeland security training sessions for local first responders,… MEMA also supported 24 statewide exercises, ranging from oil spills in the Bay to integrating the National Guard and local first responders.
To facilitate drills and exercises and to promote better situational awareness among all first responders, we are developing a common operating platform called OSPREY. OSPREY is a GIS-powered smart map that integrates critical information from across different systems and departments into one view, available to all.
10. Backup Power and Communications. Ten years ago, we did not think of backup power and communications as a matter of public safety. A power or communications outage was something to be tolerated.
Today, we’ve ensured that facilities like emergency operations centers have access to mobile backup power generators or even better, are pre-wired to accept power from mobile generators.
At one time our State had no rolling generators. But we chose to invest in them, and now we have a fleet.
This year, we passed new reforms, that require all new school construction and renovation to be equipped with backup power generation – as we make a record investment in school construction. And we have pre-wired our own mass shelters for backup power.
And we now require all nursing homes to have back-up power generation.
We have built up layers of redundant communications. For example, we connected our 911 centers, local Emergency Operation Centers and other key facilities to the State’s “voice over internet” backup system, in addition to satellite phones and ham radios. One of the legacies of September 11 is the many new, improved Emergency Operations Centers and 911 call centers all have backup power, or are set up to roll-over to a neighboring jurisdiction.
11. Biosurvelliance. Prior to September 11, we had a lot of information in our hands, but we didn’t leverage it at all. Our best line of defense was that an astute doctor might notice something was out of the ordinary.
Today, we’re one of the first states to connect all of our acute care hospitals to a single, electronic biosurveillance system, named ESSENCE. Every day, ESSENCE collects the symptoms of patients reporting to Emergency Rooms and to paramedics, the sale of over-the-counter medicines like cough syrup, and the use of prescription drugs.
During the H1N1 outbreak in 2009, we were able to use ESSENCE to track the emergence and spread of the virus.
So we’re better at knowing when a surge is coming, but admittedly, we have a lot of work to do before we reach a point where we can actually accommodate and care for a surge when it happens, which brings us to capacity #12,…
12. Mass Casualty and Health System Surge. Ten – and even five – years ago, we didn’t have the tools to deal with a mass casualty incident or hospital surge. When hospitals needed to update their status and had to divert patients to other hospitals – or when we needed to share information across hospitals about critical medicines and supplies – it was done by fax and phone, in separate systems.
Today, we’ve built an integrated health and medical dashboard that automates what used to be separate critical systems. And we’re equipping ambulances in our metro areas with handheld patient tracking devices.
In addition, we created a Disaster Medical Assistance Team prepared to deploy mobile hospital services in the event of an emergency. And we developed a Critical Care Surge plan to assist hospitals in making decisions about scarce resources during surge events, and a scoring system with objective measures like oxygen supply to determine the stress on individual hospitals during a surge like H1N1.
In one of my favorite examples of an innovative partnership between the State and a hospital, we have a stockpile of medical resources set up to convert a gym into an emergency field hospital.
Conclusion: A More Resilient Maryland
In conclusion,… in the last ten years, we have become smarter about the threats we face and the tactics we use to address and respond to them. The threats we face from terror and extreme weather are real, varied and many. But, an immune system is strong not because it out-numbers the bad germs, but because it is better coordinated than the bad germs. And in terms of our homeland security, one might add “more resilient than the bad germs."
The human body is capable of absorbing many blows and many wounds. The human heart, even when damaged can continue to pump and function up to a point. In the same way, we need to think about our State and country as a body that must be better capable of taking the hit of an attack or natural disaster.
Over the last ten years, our State has become better prepared. In the years ahead we must work to become more resilient. In a more resilient Maryland, our citizens are better prepared when a disaster strikes, and when it’s over they are better able to quickly get their lives back in order, with minimal disruption, and a minimal economic hit.
Building a resilient Maryland not only helps us better prepare to respond to disaster, but it just might, in the case of intentional bad actors, deter terror attacks from happening – if it is known that those blows can be absorbed with minimal disruption.
This is something that government can’t do alone. And this is an area where I think Baltimore in particular has a very, very important role to play as we come up on the 200th anniversary of one of the greatest stories of homeland security, preparedness, and resiliency in the history of the Republic. And that is the defense of Baltimore.
When the shock and awe force of its time rolled up on the people of Baltimore. We had no federal government. Washington been burned to the ground.
And yet the people of Baltimore, relying on one another, did not run; they hunkered down. Our merchants sunk their own livelihood, chaining their ships together at the harbor. The Mayor of Baltimore at the time – reminiscent of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake filling sandbags recently at Fells Point -- dug trenches with citizens black and white, not yet free in an as of yet imperfect country.
They had the most important title of the Republic that they brought to that defense of Baltimore, and that title is citizen.
As our world changes, so to do the avenues for engagement. When cell service jammed during the earthquake and Hurricane Irene, Marylanders took to Twitter and Facebook to communicate. And in state government we used these new media tools to communicate with the public.
In a resilient and prepared nation, government provides the information and tools that empower citizens to protect their own families and their own communities.
We are creating an Office of Resiliency within MEMA to manage and coordinate these efforts, because private sector action and involvement is critically important. The actions of non-profit and faith groups are also indispensable.
Last year, we signed agreements with more than 40 organizations who have agreed to donate supplies – ranging from retailers like Target to specialized nonprofits like the Baltimore-based American Logistic Aid Network, which provides supply chain management and helps move goods into hard to reach areas devastated by natural disasters.
I want to thank you all so very much for what you do every day.
If we’ve spent time today recapping where we’ve come from, it’s because where we have to go is so very, very important to the safety of our neighbors, the safety of our children, the safety of the Republic, the safety of the next generation.
Thank you all for joining us today. For answering that calling in your heart to serve. There is no more important work in our country today than the work all of you do as first responders.
This is a time for reflection. But I’d also like to believe that his anniversary is an occasion for citizens to look inside – and ask themselves what more they can do. What more they need to do.
In the noble and ongoing cause of creating a more secure, more prepared, and more resilient America, I share with you the truth spoken so clearly by Maryland's own, Frederick Douglass – “we are one, our cause is one, and we must help each other if we are to succeed.”
