Businesses need to remember terrorism threat.

To the editor:

I want to commend New Hampshire Business Review for its detailed Emergency Preparedness Guide in the Nov. 24-7 issue.

I am struck that the coverage focused mainly on pandemics and natural disasters. Our focus today on emergency management is a direct result of the World Trade Center attacks. We most certainly should prepare for flu, floods, earthquakes and fires. But we must also remember why we are in such a defensive mode, and that is the threat of terrorist attack.

Don't look to the Department of Homeland Security's Web site(dhs.gov) for help. While it has 20 articles on bird flu, it has none on the steps we need to take to protect and defend ourselves from nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) attacks.

Above-ground conventional hospital structures are not equipped to deal with multiple NBC causalities. In an actual nuclear, biological or chemical attack hospitals will be overwhelmed with real and imaginary injuries.

While nuclear radiation is not contagious, the hospital itself should not be expected to withstand flying debris, nuclear fallout or fire. Biological pathogens and chemical agents are spread through the air and physical contact. During a biological or chemical attack victims will descend on hospitals en masse, exposing hospital personnel to contamination.

A more efficient and dependable way to deal with the threat of weapons of mass destruction is to install underground emergency treatment centers (ETC) near local fire, police and paramedic stations. Using a fiberglass, earth-bermed arch and a self-contained underground power plant the ETC would be stocked with necessary medical supplies and equipment.

The ETC acts as an isolated underground hospital. The underground portion stabilizes indoor temperatures when the above ground heat would destroy stored antibiotics. The fiberglass arch shape is extremely resistant to flying debris. The earth over the shelter forms a radiation shield even when directly downwind of modern nuclear weapons.

A network of underground emergency treatment centers will provide a dispersed set of viable response areas to terrorist attack that above ground hospitals will not be able to handle.

Emergency preparedness guides need to address more than pandemic or earthquake business contingency planning. The Department of Homeland Security has not provided a workable solution to the nuclear, biological and chemical threats. Businesses that do not address the terrorist threat are not prepared.

Caroline Bogart

Bogart Computing LLC