This makes the heart sad: today's tragedy at Virginia Tech University leaves at least 33 dead, more injured, and hundreds of family members and friends battered by grief and worry.
Two security-related thoughts come to mind. First, one cannot help but ponder why so many were so vulnerable to a lone shooter, and if things would have been different if someone on the scene had been armed and able to fight back. We'll never know.
Second, it's very troublesome to consider that a public institution could be so unprepared and unable to communicate rapidly with its constituents. Students went to class unaware, unwarned, and unprotected more than two hours after the initial shootings.
Students complained that there were no public-address announcements or other warnings on campus after the first burst of gunfire. They said the first word they received from the university was an e-mail more than two hours into the rampage — around the time the gunman struck again.Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
He defended the university's handling of the tragedy, saying: "We can only make decisions based on the information you had on the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it."
Steger said the university decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means of notifying members of the university, but with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out to everyone.
This means that five years after 9/11 public officials are still unprepared, mentally and logistically, for the threats that stare back at us from the face of modern evil. Call this domestic terrorism and then think about it. And know that Virginia Tech is not unique.
We better learn, and set our expectations much, much higher.
Posted by Alan at April 16, 2007 05:54 PM