March 26, 2003
Newsday - John Valenti

Got a car? Sell it. Trade it in. Buy a boat. Buy a plane. Buy a hot air
balloon. Train to become a long-distance swimmer. Make friends with someone
who has a bomb shelter. Move to the backwoods of Arkansas. Or the bayous of
Louisiana.

Because with the national terror alert system level now at "burnt orange" -
somewhere between red, the highest level of threat, and orange, the
second-highest - it might interest you to know that in the event of an
attack on the metro area, the contingency plan, in most scenarios, is to ban
all of us from the major roads and highways on Long Island.

Right. No cars, no trucks. Or, as David Fischler, Suffolk County
Commissioner of Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services, said, "We're stuck. "
No mass evacuation. So, leave your keys on the table - and your vehicles in
the garage - and wait for instructions.

Why?

Because, as officials responsible for the new emergency management plan
said, there are more than 2 million vehicles on Long Island. And if all of
us took to those roads at once, trying to get off the Island in the wake of
a terrorist attack, we would find ourselves in the middle of the Mother of
All Traffic Jams.

Impossible, impassable gridlock.

"I think it is realistic to say we can't evacuate Long Island," Fischler
said. "It would be difficult, at best, since we have a limited distribution
of traffic and everything goes into a bottleneck as we head west."

Or, as Nassau County Commissioner of Emergency Management Richard Rotanz
said: "Plans are always fluid, dynamic. But the last thing we want to do out
here is overwhelm the road network."

To be fair, what choice do officials have?

We're 6 million people, including residents of Brooklyn and Queens, on what
New York State Department of Transportation Emergency Management liaison
officer Dave Williams called "a big sandbar." We cannot go north, south or
east because we are an island and because no one ever built a bridge - or a
tunnel - to Connecticut. And we have enough trouble driving west during a
normal rush hour on the World's Longest Parking Lots: The Long Island
Expressway and the Southern State Parkway. So, how could we ever expect to
get anywhere in the event of a real disaster? Honestly? We couldn't.

Which was the argument against the Shoreham nuclear power plant in the
1970s. Which is the biggest problem for emergency planners today.

Which is why the two counties, with guidance and direction from state and
local agencies ranging from police, fire and medical personnel to the State
Emergency Management Office, have centered their plans around nonevacuation
scenarios: Closed roads. Home shelter. Sit and wait. Wait and see.

"It's just a reality because of the geographic nature of Long Island," said
State Emergency Management spokesman Dennis Michalski, whose office works
hand-in-hand with the 62 counties statewide on emergency support and
planning. "You definitely want to be able to get emergency equipment in and
out of an area in the event of an emergency. To do that you have to ensure
roads remain open."

In some cases, officials said, plans provide for localized evacuations. As
they do for storms, flooding, hazardous material spills or fires. As was the
case years ago with the pine barrens firestorm. In the event of a localized
terrorist attack, the idea would be to move residents from one area of the
Island to another with the guidance of emergency personnel.

Of course, in the Post-Sept. 11 Era - in the era of War With Iraq and the
War on Terrorism - there is increased need to protect our transportation
systems, especially our roads. When we think of that and of heightened
security of our infrastructure, we think of the Brooklyn, Manhattan,
Queensboro, Triboro, Whitestone, Throgs Neck, Verrazano and George
Washington bridges, as well as the Lincoln, Holland and Queens-Midtown
tunnels. But remember: We have hundreds of bridges on Long Island. Every
highway and parkway overpass. Every underpass under a rail line. All are
bridges.

To that end, the state Department of Transportation - in coordination with
state and local police - has stepped up an awareness and security campaign,
ranging from maintenance crews to those law enforcement agents. These field
people are on the lookout for any "suspicious" activities, Williams said.

Of course, another option in the wake of a terrorist threat or attack would
be for officials to create unidirectional traffic routes. To turn our roads
into a one-way flow of cars, trucks and buses to move residents from an area
as fast as possible.

Under these scenarios, television and radio alerts would be used, as well as
the INFORM system signage on our roads and a reverse 911 emergency phone
system - where a pre-programmed, automated emergency information call can be
placed to homeowners on a specific block, town or area giving them
instructions on what to do.

Chances are, though, in most cases the message would be a simple one: Don't
drive.

"The fact is," Fischler said, "if there were some sort of nuclear, chemical
or biological attack on New York City we wouldn't want to be moving west,
towards it. And there is no reason to be moving east, since we don't have a
bridge to England yet. So, since we have no way off, we might as well stay
out of our cars. Stay put. A traffic jam would just make things worse."