CIAO DATE: 04/03

Emergency Communications: The Quest for Interoperability in the United States and Europe

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

March 2002

International Security Program
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA)
Harvard University

 

Abstract

Late in the morning of April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two sixteen-year-old students, entered Columbine High School and started a shooting spree that would leave fifteen people dead, including Harris and Klebold, and dozens of others wounded.

Within minutes of the first shootings, local police, paramedics, and firefighters arrived at the scene. Over the next several hours, they were joined by almost 1,000 law enforcement personnel and emergency responders. The task they faced was daunting. They did not know the number of attackers, their location, or the goal of the attack. Hundreds of screaming students were fleeing the school; many others were trapped in it, deadly frightened and waiting to be freed. Scores of people were wounded and needed immediate medical attention. Seventy-six bombs and explosive devices set up by Harris and Klebold had to be identified and defused.

Yet as it turned out, the biggest challenge on that Tuesday afternoon was not battling the two attackers. They had already killed themselves when the first law enforcement team entered the school. The biggest challenge was coordinating heavily armed and ready-to-fire police forces from half a dozen sheriff’s offices and twenty area police departments, forty-six ambulances, and two helicopters from twelve fire and EMS agencies, as well as personnel from a number of state and federal agencies. Coordination was difficult not primarily because of turf wars or lack of crisis management. If anything, first responders, some of who had taken part in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) training, were quite willing to work with each other.

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