emse232

Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management

Crisis and Emergency Management

March 2008 Volume 14 - Number 2

Perspectives...

My Perception of the Terrorism Risk

By: Francine Smith

My perception of terrorism today has changed dramatically since September 11, 2001. I was 18-years-old and a freshman in college on 9/11. Honestly, I never really knew what terrorism was before the attacks on the World Trade Center. I was in class when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. After class was over, I went to get breakfast, and the cafeteria was jammed with people watching New York burn on a large-screen TV. No one really knew what was going on, or why a plane flew into the building. I was only there for a minute or two when the second plane flew into the World Trade Center. I went to school in Dayton, Ohio, and almost immediately after the World Trade Center was attacked, everyone on campus heard sonic booms from the planes going off at Wright Patterson Air Force Base just a couple of miles away. Except no one had heard a sonic boom before, and word quickly spread on campus, and from the local news, that Wright Patterson was being attacked, along with other military bases around the country. University administrators put the campus on lockdown. They had the students (whose dorms were bomb shelters) shelter in-place for the rest of the day.

Within hours after 9/11, I learned not only is terrorism horrible because of the obvious reason (destruction of societies, life lost, etc.), but terrorism paralyzes us. Three-days after 9/11 I had to take a Greyhound bus to get from Dayton to Cleveland. This is a 250 mile trip, which on a bus, should take about 4 hours after all the stops. It took me 24-hours to get to Cleveland because there was a water main break at the Columbus Greyhound station (a mid-point stop on my trip), and local authorities thought it was an act of terrorism and froze all the Greyhound buses.

Terrorism changes our perception of things. It makes us think that a sonic boom is a nuclear bomb, and a water main break is an act of bioterrorism. Not only does terrorism instill fear, it slows us down and, when terrorists are doing it right, paralyzes us. It now takes at least an additional hour at the airport, and we have to subject ourselves to a strip search in the process. Going to see a museum or a ball-game requires a purse and bag check to ensure that no one is bringing in a bomb. Even going to the DMV to renew your drivers license requires you to go through a metal detector.

Things have changed a lot, and, I think for the most part, Americans have gotten used to wearing nice socks to the airport and taking their belts off at the DMV to go through the metal detector. But is it really necessary anymore? Is terrorism still so much of a threat that we need to be so cautious? The Department of Homeland Security seems to think so. The security threat color is usually at orange. However Americans appear to have gotten used to being on “high-alert.” We have not had an attack on American soil like those on 9/11 since 9/11. So does that mean that terrorism is no longer a threat? Or does that mean that DHS and the military are doing their job to protect Americans from terrorism? I think the concern that most Americans should have now, is if we stop being so cautious, if we go back to the way things were before 9/11, are we asking for another attack?