Attacks cause changes in emergency response

Jamie Koehler's Tuesday morning was mundane. She was sitting in a computer class when a teacher interrupted and broke the news that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Class just sort of fell apart, Koehler said.

Koehler and other students gathered around a TV in the classroom for several minutes before she decided to leave and head to the Cape Girardeau National Guard Armory. She had argued with a classmate about the blow being a terrorist attack.

"My head and heart just did not want to accept that at first," she said,

Throughout the armory, soldiers were gathered in small groups in the emergency center and offices watching the events unfold.

Koehler, then a major in the Missouri National Guard, was worried about her friends who worked in Washington, D.C., on the morning of and many days following Sept. 11, 2001.

"It took days to get ahold of them," she said.

The mood among service members was like elsewhere where people watched, she said.

"It was quiet. It was just a shock."

Senior officers stayed behind closed doors for most of the day, busy with conference calls and talks of security measures.

It was a long day, Koehler said, and even when she returned home and slept, the TV was on.

"You were desperate to know if everything was going to be OK," she said.

A few days after the attacks, Koehler visited Washington D.C. and went to the Pentagon. She couldn't get close, even with a military ID, but she could see charred sections of the building. Looking at the damage, she felt violated, she said.

"Even though it's not really a landmark like the Jefferson Monument, or the Washington Monument, to see it broken that way is very emotional," Koehler said. "I felt like something had been taken away."

Koehler is now the emergency services director for the Southeast Missouri chapter of the American Red Cross. Because of Sept. 11, the focus of the Red Cross and other organizations has had to shift, Koehler said, from teaching about how to prepare for and respond to natural disasters to knowing how to do the same for man-made disasters.

"Now we spend training time learning how to deal with terrorism, bioterrorism, hazardous materials and even cyberterrorism," she said.

Koehler said the Red Cross now gives training courses on psychological first aid. All victims and volunteers are offered mental health services in addition to health services after a disastrous event.

Altered operations

Other local entities, such as law enforcement, have changed operating procedures because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Although there was no breakdown of communication on the local level, law enforcement realized they needed to work together and communicate better, said Doug Richards, director of public safety at Southeast Missouri State University. That realization promoted the creation of new or better programs to foster communication in the months and years following Sept. 11, he said.

Richards heard the first news of the attacks on the radio while driving from Jackson to Cape Girardeau after just leaving the Cape Girardeau County administration building. At the time, he was chair of the county transit authority board and had been at a county commission meeting.

He immediately called the university dispatch center and asked for more details.

"By the time I got to work it was getting progressively worse," he said. There were calls to the department about the number of missing planes and a heightened awareness throughout campus that day, but as time passed, it became apparent to Richards that the incidents were isolated.

He thought about Boston International Airport, where the terrorists boarded the planes. He had gone through security there about a month before the attacks.

"The section that I saw was a beautiful, professional-looking place," he said. "I thought, how could this happen?

"It just goes to show that even when there are systems in place -- no matter how good those systems are, they can be broken."

eragan@semissourian.com

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