With North Korea’s launch of missiles yesterday, the need for America to immediately initiate a modern civil-defense program is clearly demonstrated.
Although members of the House and Senate, along with other key officials including the White House, have heavily fortified and well-stocked shelters available to them, American citizens have been left completely unprotected and very vulnerable in the event of a nuclear strike against us.
Clearly, this should be considered unacceptable and a national disgrace. Five long years after Sept. 11, 2001, our borders remain dangerously wide open despite pledges to secure them. Our seaports remain absolutely vulnerable to receiving a weapon of mass destruction, especially a nuclear weapon, despite the passing of the laughable H.R. 4954, known as the “Safe Ports Act,” which was recently gutted by eliminating funds to inspect containers before they arrive on our mainland. DP World still controls many of our largest ports despite pledging many months ago to sell control to an American firm, and the list just goes endlessly on and on.
Politicians making empty promises have betrayed the American public by assuring us of “homeland security” that they fully are aware does not exist. They have left our country in a clear and present danger with the very existence of our country at risk. Even a limited attack using a relatively small nuclear weapon detonated at a high attitude would create an electromagnetic pulse that many experts believe would be sufficiently powerful enough to destroy the very fabric of our high-technology society. America’s homeland security is a farce.
If one or several of our cities were attacked with nuclear weapons, there are no identified fallout shelters available to the public. This despite many suitable shelters built during the Cold War still being in existence, but their identifying signs and crucial supplies were unexplainably removed many years ago.
We have no vast stockpiles of medicines and medical supplies that are needed to treat the hundreds of thousands of wounded. We have no large supplies of staple foods such as wheat, rice dried beans, powdered eggs and stored water crucial to feeding our citizens in the difficult period that would follow an attack. Nor do we have appropriate portable medical facilities, transportable water treatment plants, blankets or any of the many, many other required supplies that our government urgently needs to stockpile for our national survival.
These missile launches should be the wake-up call to America. We need a national civil-defense program, and we need to start today and devote whatever resources are required to achieve it. Only then will America be secure.
Access the proposed provisions of the 2006 Civil Defense Improvement Act.
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Robert Pfriender is the founder and president of Allied International Development, Ltd., a privately held real estate development and construction management firm located on Long Island, N.Y.
