Emergency Readiness Questioned

The review has already led to some changes.

The number of staff members at the National Capital Region office has roughly doubled in recent months to about 15 people, including several borrowed from other areas of Homeland Security, Foresman said in a telephone interview. The budget, about $883,000, is expected to double or even triple in 2007, thanks in part to a measure sponsored by Virginia's two senators, Republicans John W. Warner and George Allen, seeking $2.74 million for the office.

With the added resources, the office has increased its planning for how the federal government would handle the evacuation of employees in a crisis, said Foresman, a former homeland security official for the Virginia government.

In addition, Chertoff said he convened a meeting with officials from as far away as West Virginia and Delaware to focus on drawing up an evacuation plan for the Washington area.

Local government officials said they welcome efforts to improve Homeland Security coordination with federal agencies. But they cautioned that they are opposed to federal officials taking charge of an emergency in the region.

"We absolutely do not want a federal government entity assuming control of disaster response," said Edward D. Reiskin, the District's deputy mayor for public safety.

Reiskin and other officials noted that the Arlington County Fire Department led the much-praised response to the Pentagon attack in 2001, with the U.S. military, police, neighboring firefighters and others providing support.

Officials said cooperation among local governments and first responders has gotten even better since then, aided by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants.

"We're acting more like one big response agency," said Arlington County Fire Chief James Schwartz, who oversaw the relief and rescue effort at the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

He offered an example: The region's firefighters recently agreed on common procedures in case of a radiological emergency such as a "dirty bomb." All the responders would take the same protective steps and use the same equipment, depending upon the radiation levels, he said.

On Wednesday, state and local representatives are scheduled to vote on a regional strategic plan that would commit them to further measures to improve response. Federal legislators have been sharply critical of the lengthy, two-year process to craft the plan.

Lockwood, however, said it was important to build consensus among officials and first responders in a region with a dozen jurisdictions, two state governments as well as the District's, three branches of the federal government, more than 2,000 nonprofit organizations and many business and civic groups.

"People say it's taken so long, when the real question is, it's been remarkable what's been accomplished," Lockwood said in a telephone interview.

Even as the plan was being developed, it suffered a setback when Homeland Security officials announced in June that they were sharply reducing a major anti-terror grant for the region. As a result, some regional projects, such as a planned high-tech communications system, will take longer than anticipated.

Work on the strategic plan began in 2004, after the Government Accountability Office expressed concern that there was no regionwide framework for spending the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds provided to make the area safer after Sept. 11, 2001.

Asked last week how much the area has received in federal funds to improve homeland security in the past five years, Lockwood said his office can't say for certain.

Grants from the Department of Homeland Security total about $239 million for the Washington area, according to a spokeswoman. Hundreds of millions more dollars have been provided by the departments of Defense, Justice and Health and Human Services. But some of those grants went straight to local jurisdictions or private sector institutions such as hospitals.

William O. Jenkins, director of homeland security issues at GAO, who had called for the strategic plan in 2004, said that progress was being made, albeit slowly.

"There has been more communication among the different jurisdictions and people and subgroups," he said. "They're getting more used to talking to each other."