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by Chris Patterson
Staff Writer

Mar. 4, 2004

Gazette.net

To some critics, the Genesis Project has so many flaws that the officials who designed it should look for another way to deal with the exodus that would follow a nuclear terrorist attack in Washington, D.C., or Baltimore.

But to Frederick County Sheriff James W. Hagy (R), using the Great Frederick Fair grounds to decontaminate refugees makes the most sense, regardless of the controversy surrounding the idea.

On Monday, in his first in-depth, public comments on Genesis since some of the information on the project was released by the press, Hagy defended it, saying it is merely a "concept plan," and many aspects still need to be worked out.

He acknowledged that his reticence to release, or even loosely discuss, the plan may be influenced by his role as a law enforcement officer, something that controls his tendency to limit the release of any information even remotely sensitive.

But Hagy said the Nuclear Subcommittee of the county's Local Emergency Planning Committee, which drafted the plan, voted to let him disclose the full particulars of it, despite his concerns about making the fairgrounds itself a target for terrorists.

"Now obviously the information is out there [and] I've gone back to the board of directors, and because they are such patriotic people they're saying, 'Yes, you can go public with this,'" Hagy said.

Some of the particulars have been thrown around in the press and at office water coolers around the area based on copies of slide presentations from an early version of the plan that were leaked to the media.

Other information being debated is from a presentation made to the subcommittee in July 2003 by Terrance Richardson of Reeves Manufacturing, a Frederick company that consults for government agencies and manufactures decontamination equipment.

To understand the two documents, Hagy said the first point residents need to understand about Genesis, which identifies the Frederick County fairgrounds on East Patrick Street as the key site in the plan, is that it is just a concept plan.

The committee, comprised of 15 volunteers with various areas of expertise, has worked and is continuing to work to come up with the best location to be the centerpiece of the services provided to those fleeing a nuclear attack.

That site is the fairgrounds for many reasons, he argued, and those reasons are best understood if one understands the assumptions that went into designing Genesis.



The assumptions

First is the assumption that Frederick will have to deal with the aftermath a nuclear bomb about the size of a briefcase that would lead to a mass exodus from Washington or Baltimore.

By comparison, the impacted area for a "dirty bomb," a conventional bomb that spreads radioactive material, is relatively small, and will not create the mass casualties Genesis is designed to handle, Hagy said.

The second premise, and one receiving no attention, is that Genesis is designed to operate without federal support for 72 hours. Federal assistance is supposed to come by the end of that period, Hagy said.

A third assumption is that massive numbers of burn victims, or other serious injuries, from such an explosion will not reach this far. Those fleeing to Frederick County will be physically able to travel, and will therefore have potential blindness from the explosion or radiation contamination, he said.

A fourth assumption is that people will travel to Frederick on foot.

The theory is that of the 40,000-plus Frederick-area commuters who travel down Interstate 270, many have emergency plans detailing where they should meet their family in a disaster. If I-270 and Md. Route 355 become clogged with traffic, which Hagy said will happen, people will walk to meet their families.

"Who's going to stop you? No one's going to stop me," he said. "...You're going to have to stop people if you don't want them to go to their families because human nature is to protect your family, and that's what it should be."

So the plan anticipates about 70,000 refugees and county residents seeking a way home, and help for their injuries, almost all of them traveling on foot.

A fifth assumption is that people who need medical help will go to Frederick Memorial Hospital.

To protect the city and county and help those in need, it is necessary to identify a location to decontaminate and treat people. That place needs to have a large number of buildings that can quickly be converted to a hospital, triage area and morgue. It also needs a large area for decontamination. The fairgrounds, which is fenced in, became the logical place.

The decontamination area, Hagy said, will be as far away as possible from the homes on Patrick Street and Monroe Avenue. The decontamination will be done with water from fire trucks, regardless of the outside temperature because washing people down is key. Any runoff will be focused to one area and controlled to minimize contamination of the community's water supply.



The debate

The debate about Genesis began a year ago, when the Frederick Board of County Commissioners named Hagy the unified incident coordinator. The decision was not unanimous, or even well received by some in local government.

Most vocal is Frederick Mayor Jennifer P. Dougherty (D). Prime among her concerns is the effect the plan will have on city residents.

Encouraging contaminated people into a close residential area would endanger city residents unnecessarily, she said, adding that decontamination must take place before people enter the city.

Frederick Police Chief Kim Dine said he is concerned, as Dougherty is, with routing thousands of injured and contaminated refugees into the city.

"What I've been told regarding any site ... and what I've been told even by some of the people who trained our people in emergency preparedness, is that the optimum site would not be in the most populated part of any region," Dine said. "Obviously there are many, many considerations to weigh when you're assessing and analyzing all the factors, but that's kind of the initial basic one."

Dougherty referenced a presentation of issues related to the fairgrounds by Richardson, of Reeves Manufacturing, made in July 2003 that identified key concerns. The presentation suggested alternatives for decontamination along the highways to Frederick that she believes make more sense, such as the Urbana park-and-ride lot and the Urbana carnival grounds.

In an interview this week, Richardson said the Nuclear Subcommittee ignored his recommendations last July, and he could not understand why the committee members are "hell-bent" on using the fairgrounds.

"Honestly and truly, I think they are being really reckless with their site selection," he said. "...They have no interest in discussing chemical or biological responses. They are only interested in a radiological response. That's dangerous and poses a threat, but the chemical and biological side of it is a much greater threat."

Hagy said the Nuclear Subcommittee is not looking at chemical or biological disasters because that is the purview of other subcommittees within the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Those committees are working on the scenarios to which Richardson referred.

Nevertheless, one of Dougherty's concerns is that chemical and biological emergencies require most of the same questions to be asked regarding the site for decontamination. In some fashion, contaminated or infected people have to be contained, she said.

If 10,000 people are infected in Washington by a biological bomb, the concern about those persons carrying the disease into the city is no different from concerns about bringing radiation into the city.

"Are we supposed to let people in that are contaminated and creating a risk, or are we supposed to secure our borders to make sure that people that come in have been treated," Dougherty said.

As for Richardson's plan to set up sites outside of the city, Hagy said they were considered but when he learned that Richardson's company sells decontamination devices, Hagy's interest in the presentation ended.

Still, Hagy said decontamination of people outside city limits is impractical, as there are too many ways people can enter Frederick County -- especially on foot. One prime decontamination site gives police and health care personnel more control and allows for better containment of radiated runoff.

And purely as a practical matter, having one centralized location for decontamination will make managing that process and containing the runoff easier, not to mention cheaper, Hagy argued.

The county has only received $77,000 in federal money, a small amount compared to other counties closer to Washington, he said.

Another problem with multiple sites for decontamination, Hagy said, is that setting up tents in empty lots or vacant carnival grounds takes many hours, and simply cannot be put into operation as fast as buildings that already exist.


Moving forward

Even though it was not Hagy's first choice, he is prepared to release more information on the concept plan to the public. He is contacting agencies, such as the Frederick County Health Department and the county chapter of the Red Cross, to involve them with analyzing and continuing work on the concept plan.

The Frederick Board of County Commissioners and Hagy will hold a public meeting on Genesis at 7 p.m., March 25, at Winchester Hall, 12 E. Church St., in Frederick. The meeting will be broadcast live on Frederick County government cable channel 19.

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Leader: Politics abound in 'Genesis'

by Sherry Greenfield
Staff Writer

Feb. 26, 2004

A local disaster planning committee continues to come under fire, leaving its chairman to believe it is all a game of politics.

Michael G. Hanna, chairman of the Local Emergency Planning Committee, considers the ongoing controversy about his group, and the recently completed Genesis Project, nothing more than politics.

"It's truly political," said Hanna, also a scientific officer with Intracel Corporation, a biomedical research and development company in Frederick. "You know it's just smoke and mirrors. All in all we've done a good job in a relatively short period of time."

Hanna is referring to the ongoing debate concerning the intent of the committee coupled with the dispute surrounding the Genesis Project, a new emergency plan drafted by the group and Frederick County Sheriff James W. Hagy (R). Drafts of the plan have not been made public, though some copies have leaked out.

Part of the plan involves using Frederick Fair Grounds as a site to treat mass causalities from Washington, D.C. or Baltimore who would be diverted to Frederick in the event of a radiological or nuclear attack.

Frederick Mayor Jennifer P. Dougherty (D) has complained about that aspect of the plan, as well has being excluded from the project and of not having a copy of the plan.

But in an interview Wednesday, Dougherty stressed that her concerns are not politically motivated. She is concerned with the safety of the city and its residents.

"The county commissioners and I have sworn an oath to protect our community," she said. "We asked for this responsibility. It is not political until the people say it's political."

Hagy, who is out of the office at a conference this week, agreed Wednesday through his spokeswoman, Frederick County Sheriff's Deputy Jennifer Bailey. "This is not political, rather it's public safety," Bailey said

Among Dougherty's problems with the plan is that city roads can not handle the influx of traffic that would come with using the fairgrounds to decontaminate refugees, and she worried that bringing thousands of contaminated victims into the city could be deadly for residents.

"Nobody is talking about the citizens of Spring Ridge," she said, referring to a large housing development several miles from the fairgrounds. "You don't bring everybody to the same site. You stop them at the borders and determine who has been contaminated before letting them in."

But the mayor contended that her concerns are not political.

"My concerns are the plan and the process," she said. "If it is political, well I'm an elected official and the sheriff is an elected official. But my job is to worry about the citizens in my community and the businesses in my community."

John Vitarello, a Frederick heart physician and a member of the Genesis Project, said after a closed briefing on the plan Thursday with selected municipal officials that he wants to keep politics out of the process. "We want to work with city officials and keep politics out of it," Vitarello said.

Hanna stands by the project.

"We've been questioned on why we would worry about the people in Washington," he said. "They will be ordered to move out, and it is our moral responsibility to handle those people coming up. They're going to come to Frederick, and we have to plan. I'm a volunteer in this position and I have to be patient and answer questions. But it bothers me when the questions are politically motivated."

Left out of the planning

Dougherty said she should have had input into the planning of the Genesis Project since the fairgrounds are in the city. She is angry that Hagy held a meeting Thursday with officials from several municipalities in the county, and the city was not included. Because of another regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen, Dougherty came late to the briefing. The meeting was closed to the public.

"It is an absolute mistake to say we're going to have a briefing and not to have all the players involved," she said.

Hagy last week defended his decision to hold the briefing the same night as the aldermen meeting.

"I don't pay attention to when the city's meetings are" as a county official, he said. "I don't know what night they have them."

The mayor thinks Hanna and Hagy have become defensive in their support of the Genesis Project, because they realize it is not practical.

"The process and the plan don't make a lot of sense," she said. "That is why the sheriff and Dr. Hanna are so defensive."

Calls to Hanna for further comment were not returned by The Gazette's deadline Wednesday.

Bailey said Hagy defended the planning process, saying if Dougherty wanted input, she should have not pulled city personnel off the Local Emergency Planning Committee last year.

"The mayor had every opportunity and she chose to not allow her people into the decision-making process," Bailey said.

Dougherty said city workers are still part of the group, but last spring she did notify commissioners that they would not lead or chair subcommittees. She said she believed the group had lost its focus, and was a waste of time for city workers.

But even as the threat of a terrorist attack continues to loom over the country, debate has intensified concerning the intent of the committee.

"I have concerns that the Local Emergency Planning Committee has gone beyond its statutory role of planning for the accidental release of hazardous substances," said county Commission President John "Lennie" Thompson Jr. (R). " ... They've gone way beyond their mission."

The Board of County Commissioners met in closed session Friday, and will meet again today to discuss security concerns. Thompson declined to reveal details of the discussions.

Hanna said he was unaware of Thompson's concerns and defended the group's work and intentions.

"After Sept. 11, we were to develop a concept plan for homeland security," he said. "I think my committee has been patient, and I think we've done very well."

The ongoing controversy has led to uncertainty about protection for residents during a terrorist attack.

"We don't want people to be afraid," said Leah Crace, director of the Frederick County Chapter of the American Red Cross and a member of the committee. "Some of this controversy has stirred up these fears. Some of the stuff going on is not productive."

Crace wants to assure residents that in the event of an attack or natural disaster the Red Cross and other emergency personnel are prepared.

"We've been trying diligently to prepare the community," said Crace, who cited the workshops, shelter plans and disaster tips they have prepared to educate the public if an attack were to occur.

Staff Writer Brad Pierce contributed to this story.

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Fairgrounds Could Be a Refuge
By David Snyder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 8, 2004; Page C01

The scenario is among a disaster planner's worst nightmares: A terrorist attack forces hundreds of thousands of residents to flee a major city, in this case Washington or Baltimore. A crush of panicked motorists overwhelms interstate highways. Traffic grinds to a halt as the hordes desperately seek shelter and medical help.

Under a detailed emergency plan called the Genesis Project, drafted by the Frederick County sheriff and other members of a local committee, the sick and injured would end up at the 64-acre Frederick Fairgrounds. The site, in the heart of the city of Frederick, would be converted into a mass-casualty treatment and decontamination center, handling perhaps thousands of refugees from either of Frederick's big municipal neighbors.

The fairgrounds' parking lots would become triage centers, according to the plan.

Livestock barns would become morgues.

Drawn up in secret by Sheriff James W. Hagy and others in a group that dubbed itself the Nuclear Subcommittee, the plan has not been unveiled for the public. But it has been quietly shown to more than 75 people, mainly state and local officials, some of whom, in interviews, called the Genesis Project "ludicrous" and "dangerous."

Several critics, including Frederick Mayor Jennifer P. Dougherty (D),
complained of being excluded from the planning process and warned that an onslaught of wounded people would overwhelm the city and its 130-member police force and create a public health hazard.

John L. Thompson Jr. (R), president of the Board of County
Commissioners, said the Nuclear Subcommittee -- made up of Hagy and the members of the county's Local Emergency Planning Committee -- have "gone well beyond their statutory authority."

"They picked the ball up and ran for a touchdown -- and they kept
running on out of the stadium, like Forrest Gump," Thompson said. He said the local committee exists to "plan for nonsecret, run-of-the-mill accidents." By joining Hagy in drafting the ambitious Genesis Project, Thomas said, committee members went "well beyond their role."

Hagy defended the decision not to seek advice from the public or other officials in drafting the plan, which was about two years in the making.

"If you tell the public, you tell the terrorists at the same time," Hagy said. If the Genesis Project gets a lot of public attention, he said, terrorists may also strike Frederick, hoping to disrupt the Genesis Project. "All those terrorists were educated right here in our own country, or a lot of them were," Hagy said. "We're not talking about stupid people here."

County Commissioner Michael L. Cady (R), a Hagy supporter, agreed with the sheriff's approach. "There are some things in homeland security that are not for public consumption," he said. "How many teams in the NFL hand over their playbook to the enemy?"

A person who was briefed on the Genesis Project and disagrees with the secrecy gave a reporter a copy of a 54-page plan that details how the fairground would be turned into an emergency center, with helicopter pads, hospital wards, decontamination rooms, latrines, communications posts, food storage and distribution systems and dorms for doctors and nurses.

Where the money would come from to finance the plan is unclear.
Authorities familiar with the plan, including the sheriff, declined to
discuss the issue, and other officials in Frederick said they are not
sure how the supplies needed to carry out the Genesis Project would be paid for and stockpiled. It also is unclear what approval process, if any, the plan must be subjected to. And no one can say for sure whether it would work.

Dennis R. Schrader, director of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s Office of
Homeland Security, said he is familiar with the Genesis Project but has taken no position on it.

"I suggested that if they want to move forward on this and get the state's thoughts that they should have a public hearing first to make sure everybody's on board," Schrader said.

County commissioners in March appointed Hagy "incident commander" in case of a weapon of mass destruction incident, giving him authority to draw up plans for a response to a terrorist attack. His appointment was bitterly contested, but it passed by a 3 to 2 vote, with Thompson and Commissioner Jan H. Gardner (D) opposing it.

Gardner and Thompson said the county's director of emergency management should oversee the response to such an incident. But Hagy's backers argued that an attack using weapons of mass destruction would be a crime, so a law enforcement official would be best qualified to take charge.

When the Nuclear Subcommittee began meeting, the group realized that if a large-scale terrorist attack occurred in Washington or Baltimore, interstate highways leading to Frederick would be jammed with evacuees, and the county should be prepared, according to the plan.

However, "in order to pick an evacuation site that could treat the
victims of some mass-casualty attack, we would have to have many more people involved in the site selection and logistics," Dougherty said. "We're not talking about a secret location for a continuation of government. We're talking about people that might be affected by an attack."

Friday, May 23, 2003 6:05 PM
Subject: Washington DC Metro Chief Wants Evacuation Plan

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Coordination Urged for Roads, Transit in Case of Attack

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 23, 2003; Page A01

Washington DC Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Chief Executive Richard A. White said yesterday he is alarmed by a lack of coordination among the many agencies that control the region's road and transit systems and fears that this weakness will trap people in the event of another terrorist attack.

"I wake up in a cold sweat regularly, wondering how bad is it going to be and how long is it going to take to get people out," said White, who has been calling for better teamwork among transportation providers since Sept. 11, 2001.

Although much time and money has been spent to improve emergency response since the attack on the Pentagon, White said, not enough attention has been paid to the challenge of moving people in and around the capital during a crisis.

The problem, he said, is that control of the road network is splintered among two states, one city and the federal government while transit is divided among Metro, several private bus companies and two commuter railroads.

"Who's in charge? Nobody's in charge," White said after a meeting of Metro directors about safety and security. "This region is so complex, nobody's in charge at the regional level."

White said that on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning well-prepared for a terrorist attack, he rated Washington's transportation network at 6. "By this year's anniversary of 9/11, we need to be much farther along," he said.

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees the District and federal operations, thinks that's a fair assessment, according to spokesman David Marin. "Do we have a long way to go? The answer is yes," Marin said.

A drill last month of the region's transportation agencies exposed several gaps in coordination, said Carol Kachadoorian, executive assistant to Metro's chief operating officer for rail.

"There are just a lot of things that still need to be thought through," she said. "What's the strategy for evacuating? Do you put people on trains and buses, or does that make them moving targets? If an incident happens, you have a short window of time to make decisions that keep people flowing in the District. If you don't make the calls, you have gridlock."

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG), a regional planning organization, built a $500,000 COG Communication System that can send immediate alerts to, and set up a conference call among, police officials, local governments, federal departments, schools and transportation agencies.

In March, however, when a North Carolina man drove his tractor into a pool near the Lincoln Memorial and threatened to set off explosives, the U.S. Park Police closed Constitution Avenue for 47 hours and never used the new COG communication system to inform transportation officials.

"Some federal agencies have very high levels of security, and they don't want to tell you what they're going to do until they do it," said David Snyder, chairman of COG's emergency transportation work group. "We have to get past that."

Local governments are in the middle of a politically sensitive negotiation over how to split up $42 million in newly released federal homeland security funds for the capital area.

More money would help, Snyder said. He wants to create an interactive database programmed with every possible terrorism scenario and an appropriate, coordinated response. In a crisis, a few strokes of a keypad would churn out an appropriate response plan for all state, local and federal agencies in the region, Snyder said. He estimated the price tag at $5 million.

Natalie Jones, emergency preparedness coordinator for the District's Transportation Department, said: "Transportation in this region is difficult on any given day. You throw emergency on top of that, and it makes it even more difficult. At least people are talking now, and I don't even know if that happened in the past.

"This isn't going away. As the codes keep changing every day, from orange to yellow and yellow to orange, it reminds us this is not going away and we've got a lot of work to do."

Michael F. Byrne, the Department of Homeland Security's coordinator for the national capital region, said that although he viewed his role as collaborative, White's call for someone "in charge" appeared to fit his office.

"His point is a fair criticism," Byrne said, adding that he would speak to the Metro chief about his concerns. "But there's not nobody driving the ship. I'm here to add that coordination."

Byrne said it is true that evacuation plans have some distance to go but said they are far better than they were 18 months ago. The District received federal funds in 2002 to develop a plan that encompasses the entire region, and Byrne said White has been a leader in the process. The evacuation plan is to be completed in September.

Byrne noted that Metro's lobbying after Sept. 11 to obtain a dedicated source of federal homeland security funds evolved into the regional effort to secure a coordinator in the department.

"Dick was involved in the creation of this office," Byrne said. "I hope I'm living up to his expectations."