Disaster planning still lacking.

• Position: Terrorist Attacks - Response to industrial explosion at West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. manufacturing plant, Kinston, North Carolina

North Carolina and the U.S. as a whole still have a long way to go before they can claim to be prepared for a disaster in the post-9/11 world, concludes a study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers. The study examined the response system to a devastating explosion at the West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. manufacturing plant in Kinston, N.C., in January, 2003.

The Chemical Safety Board concluded that it was an explosion of fine plastic powder used in the manufacturing of rubber products--and it presented many of the same problems that emergency responders would face in the aftermath of a terrorist bombing. In particular, there were the challenges in terms of quickly assessing the medical care needs of patients with burn and trauma injuries such as broken bones, removing patients from the disaster scene, transporting them to an appropriate medical facility, and providing optimal care to multiple severely injured patients at once.

Soon after the explosion, the response was plagued by communication difficulties and confusion. For example, cell phone networks used by emergency workers became overloaded. Emergency radio operations varied from county to county, so 800-megahertz radios were dispersed to key individuals. "Overall, the communication among the scene, transport systems, and UNC Hospitals has to be characterized as poor," the researchers charge.

Questions also were raised about the actions...